The successes of financial service startups such as Flutterwave and PiggyVest according to Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, can be attributed to providence and good government policies.
Osinbajo made the remark during a graduation ceremony at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies in Jos on Saturday.
He noted that the recently approved 2021 – 2025 National Development Plan would bring about a new season of faster growth in the country because it focuses on value addition as a major pivot to increasing productivity in every sector.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, released a statement in which he noted that Osinbajo stated if Nigeria was to launch a new age of accelerated growth, it must adopt a new strategic direction and policy orientation.
He said, “This is precisely what the Federal Government seeks to do through the National Development Plan 2021-2025, which was recently approved by the Federal Executive Council.”
The Vice President cited the emergence of Unicorns from Nigeria, stating that “six of those companies started in 2016 in the middle of two recessions and the global health crisis.”
A Unicorn is a company that is worth over $1bn.
He affirmed that some of the successes recorded by those Unicorn-Nigerian start-ups owned by young men and women could be attributed to providence and good policies.
According to him, such companies, named Unicorns in Nigeria, emerged between 2016 and 2021. They include Opay, Paystack, Flutterwave, Andela, Piggyvest and Jumia.
He said, “What is responsible for some of these successes? Providence and good policies. Providence because COVID-19 was a boom period for online payment systems.
“Policy, because Mr President approved the establishment of a Technology and Creativity Advisory Group that helped to formulate new banking policies to accommodate new tech-enabled payment systems, such that these tech companies could process payments without being full-scale banks.”
The Vice President then disclosed that, in terms of strategic direction, the cornerstone of the country’s strategy was boosting productivity by focusing on value addition as the guiding principle for all sectors, especially agriculture, manufacturing, solid minerals, digital services, tourism, hospitality and entertainment.
He noted how the plan aimed to boost productivity in some key sectors such as agriculture and mining, saying, “In agriculture, for example, just as we seek to increase the production of rice, we are paying equal attention to other parts of the value chain such as storage, transportation, processing and marketing.”
“Similarly, in the mining sector, we recognise that exploitation and extraction will not create jobs. We aim to focus on resource beneficiation, local industries, thereby creating wealth along the mineral value chain.”
