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Nigeria’s Sovereign Investment Authority or NSIA which manages its Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) is seeing opportunities for investments in domestic technology firms as it seeks to grow innovation in the Nigerian economy.
The NSIA launched its innovation fund in the fourth quarter of 2020. The fund is designed to invest in projects that promote local innovation and technology, and support first time patent seekers in the technology sector.
 “In the Nigeria Infrastructure Fund, the Innovation Fund is expected to be very active as we see opportunities in datacenters, data networking, software, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and many others, the NSIA said.
The Authority plans to conclude its first set of direct investments under the NSIA Innovation Fund in the second quarter 2021.
Although NSIA believes the market is unlikely to repeat some of the performance of 2020, it is more likely that a broader market recovery will occur with economies opening unlike the case in 2020 in which technology stocks drove market performance.
In the Future Generations Fund, it expects to allocate more capital to venture capital, global equity markets and an increasing exposure to European equities where it had been under-exposed in 2020.
NSIA believes that broad opening of the markets will provide a comprehensive lift to equities.
It also expects to complete concession, capital raise and operationalization of the three Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund PIDF road projects: Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge and Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway. The Authority anticipates breaking ground on the Ammonia and Diammonium Phosphate Plant joint venture with OCP.
Despite concerns around new waves of Covid-19, the Authority remains confident that with widespread vaccination programs, global economies will continue to reopen and create more opportunities to create value by the NSIA.