The gossip
LAGOS – After losing its Lagos beach property to controversial government plans for a coastal road, Landmark Africa in Nigeria is working on plans to build two new West African beach properties, CEO Paul Onwuanibe told Semafor Africa.
Onwuanibe said the company has received separate invitations, including one from the Gambian government and from three state governments in southeastern Nigeria, to develop waterfront recreation centers aimed at boosting tourism in those places. The two commissioned projects include a development proposed in Akwa Ibom, an oil-producing Nigerian state on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. It is expected to open before the end of the year, while the Gambia project will “take a little longer,” he said.
The new developments, for which MOUs have been signed, will be fully financed by Landmark at $5 million each, with the land coming from the government partners. “My team today met with the Gambian President’s envoy, including the First Lady, to finalize plans,” Onwuanibe told Semafor Africa on Friday.
The Akwa Ibom Tourism Commissioner, Charles Udoh, said on May 10 that the state was “seeking a partnership” with the company to develop part of the coastline for tourism.
Landmark is also “looking at a number of locations in Lagos” to build another leisure property. But that could be a challenge because “we have not yet received compensation” from the Nigerian government for the beach that has been demolished, the CEO said.
Knowing more
Nigeria demolished leisure and entertainment structures at Landmark Beach in April, angering tourism industry watchers who questioned the wisdom of destroying “the biggest tourist spot in Lagos” to build a road .
Frequented by locals and international tourists, the beach was also a music concert venue, hosting performances by top Nigerian artistes over the years, including superstars Davido and Wizkid. In addition to the beach, the wider space consists of a 9,000 square meter promenade with a shopping centre, events centre, restaurants and cafes, including the Hard Rock Cafe chain. Landmark has owned the building since 2007.
Nigerian government officials said the beach was in the path of a proposed 700-kilometer highway that would connect the country’s southwest via Lagos to Calabar in the east. A notice for the beach’s demolition was filed in March.
The highway, designed to have five lanes on each side, will cost an estimated $11 billion and be completed in eight years. It will be built by Hitech, a company owned by the Chagoury Group and whose Lebanese-Nigerian owners are long-time allies of Bola Tinubu, the Nigerian president. The company’s previous work in Nigeria includes Eko Atlantic City, a development modeled on Dubai and built on land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean.
Alexander’s vision
The ease with which Nigeria has abolished perhaps the most prized leisure asset in its largest city – even as the government expresses its push for foreign investment – offered little assurance that the country sees itself as a destination for tourism investment. It is also a testament to the risks associated with long-term real estate investments in the country.
At the same time, demand from elsewhere in Africa for investment in tourism highlights the prospects for the sector.
According to the World Bank, international tourism revenues to Africa have tripled since the early 2000s to at least $35 billion. Despite restrictions due to the pandemic, travel and tourism in Africa is expected to grow 6.5% annually over the next decade, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. That would add $168 billion to the economy over that period. Only the Middle East outperformed Africa in recovering to pre-pandemic levels of international tourism in the first nine months of 2023, the UN World Tourism Organization said.
African countries with a coastline have advantages over their landlocked counterparts in the competition for tourism investment. And intentional governments can have an even greater advantage in the long run.
Onwuanibe would like to accept the invitation to repeat Landmark’s success in Gambia, a country with 2 million inhabitants and a well-developed tourist center in relation to its size. Even though the country has lower purchasing power than Lagos, he told me that the country’s authorities have something that his hometown does not have: “They want to be a tourist destination and they are creating an environment suitable for tourism.”
Room for disagreement
On the proposed highway, John Ashbourne, emerging markets economist at Fitch Solutions in London, argues that Nigeria needs better roads. “Investors understand that expropriations are sometimes necessary for major infrastructure projects,” he said of the demolition works that have taken place, provided the process is transparent and the project is viable. “Nigeria definitely needs more infrastructure spending.”
But the reported cost of $11 billion will be “incredibly expensive by international standards,” he added, noting that the cost per kilometer would eclipse that of Austria, the most expensive place in Europe for road construction.
