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Bank of Industry, others shine at African Banker Awards

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BY: Sandra Ani

  • The Awards, held annually on the fringes of the Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank, have established themselves as the Oscars of African banking

Winners of the 2019 edition of the African Banker Awards were announced at a prestigious Gala Dinner in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

The Awards, held annually on the fringes of the Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank, have established themselves as the Oscars of African banking celebrating excellence in banking and finance on the African continent.

No one region dominated this year’s awards although there was a call from the organisers for greater effort to ensure banking was more inclusive, both in terms of gender representation across senior management in banks and lending to the small and medium sized enterprises.

This call was echoed by the two main sponsors of the awards, the African Guarantee Fund and the Bank of Industry, both of whom have created a number of innovative instruments and mechanisms to lend to the SME sector.

The two big awards of the night went to development finance institutions. Afreximbank won Bank of the Year and the Trade and Development Bank’s President, Ethiopian Admassu Tadesse, won African Banker of the Year.

TDB has grown its portfolio five-fold since Tadesse took over as President, largely increasing its presence in East and Southern Africa, where it operates.

Afreximbank in the past 18 months has launched a number of game changing products.

This year’s lifetime achievement went to former First Rand Group CEO, South African Sizwe Nxasana.

Under his leadership, the bank grew at a compound annual growth rate of 20%. In his acceptance speech, he called for even greater investment in human capital if we wanted to accelerate growth on the continent.

The African Banker Icon went to Mitchell Elegbe, founder of Interswitch, the payments service provider. His company is predicted to be Africa’s first Africa-led unicorn – tech start up whose value exceeds $1bn.

Egyptian Central Bank Governor, Tarek Amer won Central Bank Governor of the Year, for his work in restoring faith in Egypt’s markets and contributing to making it one of the fastest growing economies in the world and one of the best performing emerging markets.

Romuald Wadagni from Benin won Finance Minister of the Year. He has managed to considerably improve the country’s macro-economic indicators as well as embarked on a number of reforms to structurally transform of the economy.

South African banks dominated the investment banking and deals of the year categories.

Absa won Investment Bank of the Year. Standard Bank and RMB won the equity deal of the year with the VIVO Energy IPO.

Deal of the year in the debt category went to Rothschild & Co for the Senegal $2.2bn equivalent dual-currency Eurobond and Credit Agricole and TDB’s financing of the Floating LNG platform in Mozambique won the infrastructure Deal of the Year.

In other categories, Ecobank won Retail Bank of the year; Kenya’s KCB won the prize for innovation and Equity Bank for its CSR activities. Nigeria’s Bank of Industry won the prize for Financial Inclusion.

Commenting on the impressive achievements of the banks shortlisted for the 2019 awards, Publisher of African Banker, Omar Ben Yedder, said, “We’ve been following the work of the financial services industry for many years. The sector over the years has seen great returns, and 2018 was another strong year for banks. Undoubtedly FinTech was the most buoyant sector in terms of tech investments and we are yet to truly see the transformative impact it can have. Despite the positive stories from the banking sector, the words of the winner of our Banker of the Year still resonate when he said last year at the Africa Investment Forum: we need to speed up, scale up and synergise. “

The Awards took place in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, on the sidelines of the African Development Bank Annual Meetings which are now officially open.

The country was for many years the fastest growing in Africa with massive capital expenditure. Following the fall in the price of oil however, the country is on a plan to structurally reform its economy.

The awards, which are held under the high patronage of the African Development Bank, are sponsored by the African Guarantee Fund as Platinum Sponsor, the Bank of Industry as Gold Sponsor and Coris Bank as Associate Sponsor.

The Host Sponsor this year was Banco Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial, by far the country’s biggest bank in terms of assets and footprint. The awards were preceded by a cocktail reception hosted by Afreximbank.

THE 2019 AFRICAN BANKER AWARD WINNERS:

African Banker of the Year

Admassu Tadesse, TDB

Lifetime Achievement Award

Sizwe Nxasana, former CEO, First Rand Group

African Banker Icon

Mitchell Elegbe, Founder, Interswitch Group

African Bank of the Year

Afreximbank

Minister of Finance of the Year

Romuald Wadagni, République du Benin

Central Bank Governor of the Year

Tarek Amer, Central Bank Governor, Egypt

Best Retail Bank in Africa

Ecobank

Investment Bank of the Year

Absa Capital

Award for Financial Inclusion

Bank of Industry, Nigeria

Special Commendation for their contribution to the development and financing of the Rural Sector: Banco Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial (BANGE)

Socially Responsible Bank of the Year

Equity Bank, Kenya

Innovation in Banking

KCB, Kenya

Special Commendation: JUMO, South Africa

Deal of the Year – Equity

Vivo IPO

Standard Bank & Rand Merchant Bank (South Africa)

Deal of the Year – Debt

$2.2bn Senegal Eurobond

Rothschild

Infrastructure Deal of the Year

Mozambique Floating LNG

TDB & Credit Agricole

Regional Bank of the Year

East Africa – KCB, Kenya

West Africa – Orabank

North Africa – Banque de l’Habitat (Tunisia)

Southern Africa – Mauritius Commercial Bank

Central Africa – BGFI, Gabon

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AVEVA Appoints Joanna Mainguy as New Sustainability Accelerator Director

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Joanna AVEVA
Joanna Mainguy, Sustainability Accelerator Director at AVEVA
  • Joanna Mainguy will steer strategies for sustainability innovation across AVEVA’s portfolio and partner ecosystem, furthering ESG targets for 2025 and beyond

AVEVA, a global leader in industrial software, driving digital transformation and sustainability, today announced the appointment of Joanna Mainguy as Sustainability Accelerator Director.

Joanna’s appointment testifies to AVEVA’s dedication to strengthening the company’s sustainability impact in line with advancing global climate commitments. 

As Sustainability Accelerator Director, Joanna Mainguy will focus exclusively on sustainability solutions and strategies to accelerate innovation that will help AVEVA’s customers to achieve their net-zero targets.

She will look at how AVEVA leverages current market and customer analysis to inform its in-house development team, advise on new customer collaborations and on how AVEVA should grow its partnership network and M&A pipeline to reflect its sustainability priorities.

Joanna will lead the implementation of a sustainability solutions plan tailored to meet the most pressing needs of AVEVA’s industrial customers on low-carbon transition, circularity and resilience, via an integrated product, marketing and sales approach. She will work closely with AVEVA’s portfolio, business area and R&D leads to continue to develop new sustainability capabilities and drive collaboration on go-to-market initiatives that support industry with contributing to an accelerated energy transition and shift to a circular economy.

Joanna was formerly Industry Director, EMEA, for Energy & Sustainability at Microsoft, where she led strategic engagements with major energy providers and supported the energy transition with digital solutions. She has worked across the entire energy value chain and has more than 15 years of experience in process industries and the energy sector, including work for major system integrators, software and energy companies.

Lisa Wee, Global Head of Sustainability, AVEVA, said: “We are excited to welcome Joanna to AVEVA. She will bolster our mission to enable faster uptake of existing sustainability solutions across the industrial landscape, while in parallel we continue to invest in product capabilities and partnerships that will push out the frontiers of sustainability innovation for industry. At AVEVA we look to lead by example on sustainability and we achieved a 93% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions last year. We aspire to help our customers better leverage digital solutions to realize their own ambitious sustainability targets early, and Joanna brings a wealth of experience to help support this.”

Commenting on her appointment, Joanna Mainguy, Sustainability Accelerator Director, AVEVA, said: “I am delighted to join AVEVA at such a pivotal time in its sustainability innovation and growth trajectory. I look forward to working with AVEVA teams and customers to continue to grow the sustainability benefits that can be achieved with AVEVA software. I am also keen to work closely with our partners to drive further positive change at scale, since we know addressing the climate crisis will continue to require expanded collaboration”.

AVEVA actively embeds sustainability into its core product strategy with specific capabilities in its software portfolio.

AVEVA’s software enables organizations to connect and contextualize key sustainability data with artificial intelligence and human insight, enhancing their agility, resilience and sustainability in order to help drive responsible use of the world’s resources.

AVEVA’s 2023 Sustainability Progress Report reveals significant progress across all three pillars of the company’s sustainability framework, encompassing product strategy, operations and culture. 

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Climate Change: NNPC Ltd/Total Energies JV Achieves Zero Gas Flare

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In pursuit of meeting the targets of 20% (unconditional) and 47% (conditional) greenhouse gas emission reduction as contained in the Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Accord signed by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, the NNPC Ltd/TotalEnergies Joint Venture has achieved zero routine gas flare in all its assets.

According to a statement signed by Olufemi Soneye, Chief Corporate Communications Officer, NNPC Ltd., this feat was announced on Thursday during an inspection tour of OML 100 in South-eastern Niger Delta, off Port Harcourt, by a joint NNPC Ltd and TotalEnergies Team to ascertain the success of the OML Flare Reduction Project launched in December 2023.  

The NNPC Ltd/TotalEnergies Joint Venture, which is the concession holder of four leases, had hitherto achieved zero routine flaring across OML 99 (2006), OML 102 (2014), and OML 58 (2016), leaving OML 100 as the only lease with routine flaring going on.

The significance of this achievement is that the last routine flare volume of about 12MMscf/d (twelve million standard cubic feet per day) of gas has now been eliminated giving rise to a greenhouse gas emissions reduction of about 341KtCO₂e/yr.

The achievement is an outcome of a programme introduced by the NNPC Ltd to galvanize action towards achieving the zero routine flare by 2030 across its portfolio of assets.

It is also a testament to NNPC Ltd’s prioritization of sustainability anchored on the ‘first R’ of its 5R Strategy (Reduce, Replace, Renew, Re-plant, Repurpose), as it strives to reduce its carbon footprint.

Work is ongoing across all other assets within NNPC Ltd’s Upstream Directorate to ensure that all assets achieve zero routine flaring by 2030 or earlier.

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Energy

NNPC Celebrates 14,000bpd Production from Akpo West Field

By SANDRA ANI

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In line with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s directive to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) to optimise production from the nation’s oil and gas assets, the Company has announced the successful commencement of oil production from the Akpo West Field.

The milestone, which is the result of meticulous planning, strategic collaboration, and unwavering dedication from all stakeholders involved in the project, will add 14,000 barrels per day condensate to the nation’s production. This will be followed up by the production of about 4million cubic meters of gas per day by 2028.

The development of Akpo West which is on Petroleum Mining Lease (PML) 2 (formerly OML 130) leverages the existing Akpo Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility via a subsea tie-back to keep costs low and minimize greenhouse gas emissions.

The milestone was enabled by the strategic leadership of the Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO), Mr. Mele Kyari, and the Upstream Directorate of the NNPC Ltd whose support played no small role in propelling the operators to actualise the short- and mid-term hydrocarbon production goal of the President Tinubu administration.

Located 135 kilometres offshore, Akpo West is one of the discoveries on PML 2 with proximity to the Akpo main which started up in 2009 and produced 124,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2023.

PML 2 is operated by TotalEnergies with a 24% interest, in partnership with CNOOC (45%), Sapetro (15%), Prime 130 (16%), and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd as the concessionaire of the Production Sharing Contract (PSC).

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