The bankable need for private health institutions within Nigeria is about $3 billion with an available leveraged funding potential of about $1 billion that could be tapped for investment into health, according to a new study by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.
The IFC is therefore partnering with the Federal Ministry of Health and James Daniel Consulting to organise the Nigerian Healthcare Infrastructure Investment Summit in Abuja this week at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.
“Nigeria today is an investor’s dream with abundant opportunities and an unprecedented appetite for public private partnership in the health sector of Africa’s largest market for healthcare investment”, said Onyebuchi Chukwu, minister for health.
This summit targets the private sector in healthcare and aims to showcase the best practices of what works within the private health sector in Nigeria and other countries.
The IFC will also be launching her maiden edition of the study, Nigeria Health Market Studies, which details investment opportunities within the Nigerian health sector and how to create value for Nigerian patients through private sector investment, a statement from the World Bank said at the weekend.
“The private sector in Nigeria has a bigger chance of excelling more than other countries both in terms of intellectual capacity and in terms of potential resources that are not harnessed yet”, said Khama Rogo of World Bank Group.
IFC will provide liquidity support and local guarantees for local financial intermediaries to increase health sector lending.
Among other things, the summit would assess business plans, opportunities and partnerships within the healthcare sector for investment and will provide tips and opportunities to access funding.
Panelists are drawn from the private and public sectors and session topics range from investment models for healthcare and business intelligence for healthcare investment to regulation and quality issues.
The objective of this summit is to bring the private health sector market in Nigeria closer to the investment community and forge a pathway that will expand access to healthcare for the Nigerian population. This is part of the Health in Africa initiative which carries out analysis for decision making for both private and public sectors in addition to credit access through direct credit, funds and local banks to private health care companies and policy and regulatory support to governments.
