TONY ELUMELU X UBA; CREATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENTREPRENEURS.

Moving across Africa is challenging, trading across borders even more so.

The recent UBA Africa Day event had in attendance Abdoul-Aziz Dia – a group Board Director at UBA, who is Senegalese by birth with strong Fulani ancestry. His wife is Guinean, and their three children were born in Kenya, Ghana and Senegal respectively. At the event, Mr Dia discussed the issues he often experiences while travelling on the continent—from immigration challenges to transportation logistics to the high costs associated with travelling within the continent. 

This sentiment is shared by many entrepreneurs and organisations who trade across country borders in Africa and formed the basis of the Chairman, United Bank for Africa, Mr. Tony Elumelu’s discussion during the Presidential panel of the AfCFTA Business Forum at the 32nd Ordinary Summit of the African Union (AU) held in Niamey, Niger.

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) will create a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, thus accelerating intra-African trade. The AfCFTA offers immense opportunities to African SMEs and corporations, whose products and services will be exposed to a market of 1.2 billion people and a continental GDP of $2.19 trillion.

With the implementation of this agreement in view, it is important that corporations and SMEs take practical steps to seize these opportunities that the AfCFTA will provide.

For larger corporations, this is might be easy, but for SMEs these opportunities are limited by access to finance, market and infrastructure. This is why UBA has partnered with the Tony Elumelu Foundation to offer the UBA Marketplace at the 2019 edition of the Foundation's Entrepreneurship Forum which will take place at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja from Friday, July 26^th to Saturday, July 27^th, 2019.

The UBA Marketplace is an shopping experience providing hundreds of small businesses across Africa the chance exhibit and sell their products to over five thousand expected guests. To register now for a free stall or to attend the UBA Marketplace please visit: www.ubagroup.com/marketplace.

The entrepreneurial fair will host thousands of people from across Africa to give them an exciting offline shopping experience.

People will engage, shop and network with hundreds of small businesses in food, fashion, beauty & home and interior industries who will have the opportunity to exhibit and sell their products for free to thousands of visitors at the Forum which holds at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, Nigeria.

There will also be interactive and knowledge sharing sessions with some of Nigeria's most talented business, film and music personalities on how to build a sustainable business.

Read all about it here; http://bit.ly/UBAMarketplace19

You can also join the conversation online using the hashtag #UBAMarketplace19