Business
How I was denied entry into South Africa – BUA Chair
The founder of BUA Group, Abdul Samad Rabiu, said South African authorities denied him entry because his visa expired a day before his arrival in 2025, while Europeans were reportedly allowed into the country without visas.
The business mogul disclosed his travel experience while speaking at the Africa CEO Forum titled “Africa at Scale: Capital, Policy, and the Architecture of Growth” on Thursday in Kigali.
The billionaire said he returned to Lagos after waiting at Cape Town airport for hours, noting the experience as part of the challenges faced by Africans in Africa.
“I had a personal experience. Last February, I was travelling to Cape Town for the Mining Indaba. And as we landed, I left at night from Lagos to Cape Town. We arrived at 6 in the morning.
“As we arrived, we went to immigration. I tendered my passport, and the immigration officer looked at it and asked, ‘Where is your visa?’ and I said, ‘My visa is there.’ Unknown to me, my visa had expired the day before.
“Unfortunately, our crew did not check the visa to ensure the visa was valid. We were there for four hours, but at the end of the day, I had to turn back. I was turned back to Lagos,” he said.
According to the BUA Group chairman, passengers from three international flights, most of whom were Europeans, were allowed into Cape Town without visas.
The businessman said he understood why he was denied entry, but noted that allowing foreigners from other continents into South Africa without visas while restricting Africans from entering did not sit well with him.
“But the issue is, while we were waiting to see whether we would be able to get access to the countries without visas, there were three international flights from Europe. All three flights were mostly Europeans.
“I was standing there by the immigration desk, and every passenger on those three flights went into Cape Town without any visa. I do not have a problem with the fact that I was there without the visa and I was returned. I took full responsibility for that,” he said.
“I had an issue with being an African in Africa, being turned away because I did not have a visa, while foreigners from other continents were coming in and were allowed to enter without a visa. This must change,” he said.
Lack of cooperation
Mr Rabiu said there is a lack of cooperation among African countries, which affects the movement of Africans and also frustrates business expansion from one country to another on the continent.
Giving another instance, he said some countries lack the spirit of agreement on the continent, noting that their practices were not supportive when the BUA Group tried to expand into those countries.
“At BUA Group, as we expanded our regional investment, we actively sought to supply several African markets under the African Continental Free Trade Area framework.
“While some countries embraced the spirit of agreement, others were less supportive in practice, with administrative barriers and legacy import structures limiting our ability to participate fully in regional trade.
“So really, AfCFTA is not working as it should. Because I had a personal experience in one of the countries that we tried to penetrate, we were actually frustrated,” he said.
The BUA Group chairman said the experience underscores a broader challenge facing Africa, noting that although the African Continental Free Trade Area framework was created to integrate African markets, implementation across the continent remains inconsistent.
According to him, true integration is what transforms potential into economic scale, with the AfCFTA serving as a key driver through its market of more than 1.4 billion people across 55 countries.
ALSO READ: South Africa relaxes visa rules for Nigerian tourists, business persons
He described the AfCFTA as one of the world’s most ambitious integration initiatives, stating that “its promise is clear: intra-Africa trade, regional value chains, and industrial scale that no single economy can achieve alone. Its potential does not deliver outcome, execution does.”
Africa’s transformation
Mr Rabiu said Africa’s next phase of transformation largely depends on five areas: capital, policy, infrastructure, value addition, and integration.
According to him, Africa needs capital to finance ambition, policy to enable execution, infrastructure as the foundation of growth, value addition to unlock the full value of its resources, and integration to unlock scale and fully drive its next phase of transformation.
“Let me start with capital. Across the continent, institutional capital is expanding—pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and increasingly sophisticated private investment vehicles, yet infrastructure financing remains far below potential.
“The reality is clear: Africa is not short of capital; it is short of coordinated, mobile capital deployed at scale. We must unlock cross-border capital flows, harmonise investment frameworks, strengthen project preparation, and expand risk-sharing mechanisms for both domestic and international investments.
“Deepening capital markets is equally critical; cross-border listings, interoperable settlement systems, and expanded local currency trade are not merely technical reforms; they are strategic infrastructure,” he said.
He said segmented legal frameworks, overlapping approvals, and inconsistent enforcement continue to raise the cost of investment across many regions in Africa, describing them as structural constraints on growth.
“What is required is clear and transparent rules, predictable enforcement, and coordinated industrial strategies across borders. Alignment does not compromise independence; rather, it strengthens economic performance,” he added.
He reiterated that infrastructure is important to Africa’s growth, noting that no economy can industrialise without systems that power growth, including reliable energy, efficient ports, modern rail networks, quality roads, and digital connectivity.
President Bola Tinubu has challenged Nigerian banks to shift their focus from financing the government to providing affordable credit to businesses and productive sectors of the economy to drive investment, production and job creation.
Mr Tinubu, who was represented by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, made the call at the 19th Annual Banking and Finance Conference of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) on Tuesday.
The President said while the government’s economic reforms had restored macroeconomic stability and improved investor confidence, the next phase must focus on converting those gains into investment, production, jobs and improved living standards.
“The current phase of our reform journey is accelerating the conversion of stability into investment, investment into production, production into jobs, and growth into improved living standards,” he said.
He urged banks to move “from intermediation to transformation”, arguing that the performance of financial institutions should no longer be assessed only by balance-sheet growth, profitability and shareholder returns.
According to him, the critical question should be what the financial system is doing for the real economy.
“A resilient banking system cannot assist indefinitely where businesses cannot obtain affordable credit. Manufacturing that is struggling cannot expand, and millions of productive MSMEs remain outside the formal financial system,” Tinubu said.
He said the government was therefore expanding the architecture of guarantees, risk-sharing, blended finance and credit enhancements, with a National Credit Guarantee Company at its core, to crowd in private capital and support productive investment.
The Nigerian leader said success should increasingly be measured by how much productive capital government policies catalyse, rather than simply by how much the government spends.
Banks must finance growth
The President also said the recently concluded bank recapitalisation must result in more than larger balance sheets, stressing that it should translate into increased capital formation in the real economy.
“It must translate into capital formation in the real economy, financing Nigerian businesses as they expand across Africa and pursue our ambition of a $1 trillion economy,” he said.
“A bigger bank that does not finance a more productive economy is a suboptimal outcome.”
He also called for broader financial inclusion, saying access to bank accounts does not automatically translate into access to finance.
He said the financial system should enable small businesses and entrepreneurs to obtain working capital based on viable cash flows rather than collateral they may not possess.
“We must build a system that finances potential and opportunities rather than quick gains for the privileged,” he said.
Mr Tinubu further called for a transition away from a financial system where attractive returns on government securities make lending to productive businesses less compelling.
He said that improving fiscal conditions would allow the government to create more space for private-sector credit progressively.
The President described the desired outcome as a “virtuous cycle” in which stronger fiscal discipline reduces pressure on government borrowing, lower inflation lowers interest rates, and cheaper capital stimulates investment and production.
He added that increased production would generate more jobs, incomes and tax revenues, further strengthening fiscal sustainability.
“That is how gains from reform begin to compound at scale, and the financial sector must be ready for that transition,” he said.
Tinubu also identified technology, long-term capital and trust as key pillars of a resilient financial system, warning that greater digitalisation would bring increased cybersecurity risks.
He said Nigeria would need to deepen its capital markets, insurance, pension, and asset management industries to mobilise domestic savings and foreign capital for long-term investment.
On the broader economy, the President said Nigeria’s GDP grew by 4.43 per cent in the second quarter of 2026, while headline inflation had eased to 15.43 per cent and external reserves had crossed $54 billion.
He said the improvements showed that “stability has returned” and “credibility is rising”, but cautioned that macroeconomic stability should not be mistaken for economic prosperity.
“Stability is a foundation; prosperity is a destination,” Mr Tinubu said.
“The good news”
In his remarks, Dele Alabi, President/Chairman of Council, CIBN, said the good news is that certain policies implemented in the past couple of years are beginning to yield fruit.
For example, he argued that within Nigeria’s financial system, 33 banks met the revised minimum capital requirements, raising ₦4.65 trillion in new capital, providing a further buffer against domestic and external shocks.
READ ALSO: Credit bypassing Nigeria’s job creators — World Bank Official
“Likewise, recent indicators show that these efforts are beginning to rebuild confidence. As announced by Moody’s Ratings on 28 August 2026, Nigeria’s outlook was changed from stable to positive while the sovereign rating was affirmed at B3,” he said.
Additionally, the CIBN president explained that according to FTSE Russell’s March 2026 Semi-Annual Country Classification Review, Nigeria will be reclassified from Unclassified to Frontier market status, effective 21 September 2026.
“To top all this off, the icing on the cake is that according to the latest figures from the National Bureau of Statistics’ Q2 2026 Gross Domestic Product Report, real GDP grew by 4.43 per cent year-on-year in Q2 2026, up from 3.89 per cent in Q1 2026,” Mr Alabi said.
He noted that collectively, these are important signals of stronger macroeconomic stability, improved investor confidence, and the prospect of broader access to global capital.
He explained that the true test is whether stronger fundamentals translate into lower living costs, more jobs, higher real incomes, affordable credit, reliable public services and reduced poverty.
“Macroeconomic progress must therefore be felt at the micro level – in households, small businesses and the daily lives of ordinary Nigerians,” Mr Alabi said.
He said it is for this reason that the theme of this year’s Conference is sound, and as Nassim Nicholas Taleb aptly observed in his book Antifragile, “Wind extinguishes a candle and energises fire.”
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