Abia State Steals Spotlight At Inaugural Sports African Investment Summit

The inaugural edition of the #SportsAfricaInvestmentSummit (#SAIS2025) delivered two power-packed days of dialogue, deal-making, and action-oriented discussions, setting the stage for accelerated investment in African sports.

Sport Nigeria’s Vice Chairman, Yahaya Maikori, delivered the welcome address, setting the tone for a summit that brought together key stakeholders across sports, business, and governance. The CEO of Sport Nigeria LTD/GTE, Nkechi Obi, set the agenda for the summit. The Chairman of the National Sports Commission, Mallam Shehu Dikko, delivered the keynote address, “Sports as a Catalyst for Africa Towards 2063”.

The Summit had three plenary sessions, one fire-side chat and 18 breakout sessions with various engaging topics all focused on how Africa can create a market for sports goods and services, how the ideal products suitable for the market can be developed and how the market creation and product development activities can be funded.

Two major highlights at the Summit were the signing of a technical and collaborative agreement between the Government of Abia State and Sport Nigeria LTD/GTE for the development of the Abia State Sports Special Economic Zone (#SSEZ), and the presentation of Spaces For Sport (#S4S), Sport Nigeria’s flagship community-based infrastructure project.

Goodwill messages were delivered by the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe, XAVIER MURON, Country Manager of Agence Française de Développement, and Christophe Bazivamo, the High Commissioner of Rwanda to Nigeria. The Summit was closed by Lanre Buluro, Managing Director, Investment Banking of Chapel Hill Denham: who represented the CEO, Lanre Balogun.