BUSINESS ROUNDUP: Chevron’s divestment; downsides of border closure. See other stories that made our pick

Hello and welcome to the Business Roundup this week. In case you missed out on details, here are the top highlights of events that happened during the week.

Headlines:

• Chevron to sell 2 Nigerian oil blocs
• Nigeria generated $21bn from oil and gas in 2017 —NEITI
• Awabike takes bicycle-sharing business to ABU
• Border closure causing rise in inflation —Finance Minister

Summary:

California-based global oil giant, Chevron, has formally initiated the sale of its interest in its Nigerian offshore exploration, comprising two hydrocarbon blocks.

The proceeds from the divestment of the operations, running under the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 86 and OML 88, is intended to be committed to Chevron’s increasingly vibrant US production, the sale document confirms. To see why selling the blocks will put further strain on the turbulent relationship between the company and Nigeria, read here.

Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) said on Thursday the country realised about $21 billion from the oil and gas sector in 2017. The agency disclosed this in its latest audit report released, saying the figure was 23 percent higher than the $17.05 billion realised in 2016.

However, it was lower by about 15 percent than the 2015 inflow of $24.79 billion. To find details on the various revenue streams, follow link.

Students of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, will soon make up Awabike’s second market base, the result of a new business signing as recently endorsed by the school management.

Awabike, the bicycle-sharing startup that launched last year in Lagos State University (LASU), announced this expansion through its official instagram page @awabikeng, informing its new prospects to anticipate the Awabike ride experience. Read up on the exclusive report here.

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, Wednesday disclosed that the closure of the country’s land borders was contributing to rising inflation.

Figures from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics showed that the headline inflation stood at 11.61 per cent as of October. Here is why Ahmed said inflation rose due to hike in food prices. Read here.

On NSE ROUNDUP: Marginal rise of the bourse in a week of mixed fortunes.

Read also: BUSINESS ROUNDUP: FG’s Enugu coal mines revival, GDP’s increase in Q3 2019; see other stories that made the pick

The Nigerian bourse recorded some positive performances across its key market indices this week.

The All Share Index (ASI) rose marginally by 0.04% to 27,002.15 basis points from the 26,991.42 recorded last week. Market Capitalisation equally responded to the positive trend, rising also by the same margin from the N13.027 posted last week to close at N13.033 trillion. Find out more.

Meanwhile, on our editorial Business Review segment;

We reviewed Sim Shagaya’s uLesson initiative –the newly raised $3.1m in seed funding, and examined the significance of Edutech in a Nigerian/African context. With the momentum and aggression recently recorded in the space, the future of school business might be edutech.

While it might be fascinating to see such project prosper; we, however, mentioned a few challenges that the Sim Shagaya team must pay attention to in order not to hit the wall. Read the review here.

Also, we did an analysis of the Jumia business and why it is failing to scale as envisaged on paper. In doing this, we established our background based on the two recent closures –the Cameroon and Tanzania branches that happened in a matter of days.

In the review, we looked at African factors affecting the success of eCommerce as a whole. Find the full review here.

Bye for now, and see you next week for another yet fresh serving of Business Roundup. For the latest news and updates from around the globe, keep reading Ripples Nigeria. Bye, and happy new month.

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