The President of the African Development Bank Group (www.AfDB.org), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has reaffirmed the Bank’s strong commitment to supporting African entrepreneurs and industrial innovation. He was speaking during a visit to Saglev, a Nigerian electric vehicle assembly and distribution company in Lagos. 

“Our role as a bank, and my role as President, is to be a champion of African entrepreneurs.” Dr. Adesina said.  

Located in Ikorodu, in the north of Lagos, Saglev Electromobility Nigeria Limited produces electric vehicles from semi-knocked-down components under a technical partnership with a Chinese automobile group. Targeting Nigeria and other emerging markets, the plant has an annual capacity of 2,500 vehicles on a single shift, expandable to 10,000 with multiple shifts 

Welcoming Dr. Adesina to the facility, Saglev Chairman and CEO, Dr. Sam Faleye, described the visit as a fulfilment of a promise made during the 2024 Africa Investment Forum in Rabat, Morocco. “You told me you’re going to come here,” he said.  

Adesina was accompanied by his wife, Mrs Grace Yemisi Adesina, and a Bank delegation that included the Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization, Solomon Quaynor, and the Director General of the Nigeria Country Department, Dr. Abdul Kamara.  

Faleye shared his journey from Nigeria to the United States and back to Nigeria. “I went to the US, I practiced 28 years as an Internist, and also in Clinical Informatics, and I ended up here. If I did this project anywhere else in the world, it would not satisfy me as much as this satisfies me.” 

During the tour, Adesina engaged in discussions on the key challenges facing Nigeria’s automotive sector, including fiscal policy, logistics, access to finance, and the lack of local manufacturing capacity for critical components. He also explored issues related to battery technology, charging infrastructure, capacity building, and the Bank’s commitment to clean energy investments.  

“For us as the African Development Bank, a big part of our work is infrastructure. That is what I see here—you need to be able to have power at a lower cost, so that your unit cost of production will be low,” Adesina said. “Electric vehicles run on electricity -- and that is why at the African Development Bank, in the last 10 years, we have connected more than 28 million people to electricity, investing heavily in energy.” 

He added, “If you look at the amount of solar radiation we have in Africa, it’s about 11 terawatts, hydro is about 350 gigawatts, wind is about 150 gigawatts, and geothermal is about 15 gigawatts, so Africa is actually the largest place in terms of renewable energy sources. When you have that amount of renewable energy resources, clearly, how we power our homes, offices, industries, and cars, is very important. Globally, the electric vehicle market is valued at about 7 trillion dollars today, by 2050 it will be 59 trillion dollars, so you’re in what is a very major sector for the energy transition.” 

He commended Faleye for investing his own capital significantly into the company, given the high borrowing costs in Africa. “The cost of capital in Africa is three to five times higher than in any other part of the world. And so, the African Development Bank can help in many ways to de-risk lending to companies like this. We have a lot of facilities that can do that. We also have lines of credit we provide for commercial banks, many of them in Nigeria, that are able to support us as well.” 

Adesina commended the high caliber of the company’s young engineers and technicians, citing their skills and evidence of the quality of Nigerian technical education. He also praised the company’s effort toward gender inclusion, particularly among its technical workforce.  

He also underscored the importance of African diaspora to the continent’s development, praising Faleye for returning to Nigeria to invest in the country’s automobile industry. 

“You’re a medical doctor by training, you didn’t have to be doing this, you were already doing very well in the United States, but I think the passion, the drive, and the commitment that you have to Africa is how we want it to be. Africa’s diaspora is valuable not just in terms of money—we get about $91 billion of remittances that come to Africa every year, and those remittances are very important—but I think the big power of diaspora is the knowledge, the skills and the commitment to the continent of your birth.”