Saturday, February 27, 2010

Nigeria has overtaken Ireland to be the Biggest Market for Guinness.

Guinness has been made for nearly 250 years at the St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin, but rising property values have led Diageo to consider selling the site.

Estimates put a value of up to €1bn (£787m) on the 56-acre Dublin site on the south quays of the river Liffey. The Dublin brewery produces some 500m litres of the stout every year, half of which is exported.

Diageo may build a new brewery on a site at Balbriggan, north of Dublin, while keeping some activity at St James’s Gate as a tourist attraction.

Diageo on Thursday said in a trading update that its sales were in line with expectations, with organic sales rising 7 per cent in the nine months to March 31. The company is sticking with its previous guidance of 9 per cent growth in full-year operating profits for the year to June 30.

Analysts said the guidance showed Diageo remains confident of withstanding  a downturn in consumer spending in the US, the world’s biggest spirits market.

Diageo’s shares fell 14p to £10.28.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Nigeria Largest Telecom Market in Africa – ITU

The International Telecommunications Union, yesterday in Abuja, declared Nigeria as the largest telecom market in the continent with over a quarter of all subscriptions in the continent, this according to a report in The Guardian.
Vice President Goodluck Jonathan who was represented by the Minister of National Planning, Dr Shamsuddeen Usman, as the Special Guest of Honor at the maiden edition of the ITU_SecGen.jpgAfrica Telecoms Development Summit 2009, which began in Abuja yesterday, said government is committed to encouraging investment flow into the sector with the aim of attaining 100% teledensity before the year 2020 in line with Vision 20-2020.
Dr. Hamadoun Toure, Secretary the first African Secretary General of the ITU, who delivered the key note speech at the summit said “what is needed now is a major push forward in broadband access, where Africa still lags behind every other region of the world. By the end of last year there were still only 635,000 fixed broadband subscribers across sub-Saharan Africa – or less than a tenth of the population of Lagos.