The relationship between Norway and Africa has increased over the years as Norwegian trade with Africa deepens. There has been a 50% increase in the country’s activities in Africa since 2018 and only recently, the country set up a permanent mission with the African Union.
In the 32nd AU summit, Erna Solberg, the Norwegian Prime Minister was in talks with several African countries about deepening its ties with the continent. Their discussions were in the context of mutually favorable businesses for both parties which involved the tech sector, renewable energy, logistics, and a whole lot more.
Freight in Time is a start to finish logistics supply chain organization that provides fast logistics Air, Road freight, Sea, contract customized brokerage services. They have offices throughout Africa and the world at large. It was founded in 1968. It has several branches in Africa and has a big footprint in the area. Norfund bought over a billion shillings to Freight in Time as the Norwegian government equity financing to help promote the growth of East African countries. FiT is a Kenyan logistics company that runs its services in several countries within the African continent.
Norway’s government bought shares in the company through Norfund, which is the country’s investment fund, and that has an interest in the region. They made the move to be able to understand and visualize the development, and that is why they partnered with the company for a long term investment that could potentially contribute to the competency of the sector in the country with professional and non-financial support. The company only partnered with Norfund because of its humanitarian goals. Besides NorFund’s move to expand Norway’s freight industry to African countries, other businesses in Norway are expanding their services to the African continent as well, one of such businesses is the Norwegian casino industry which is totally monopolized by the government. Visit this website to find out about the various Norwegian casinos that offer their services to the African market. Especially because casinos in Norway cannot freely operate due to excessive control from the government and as such, owners expand into other markets, with African countries being a few of them.
Sustainable enterprises and Transit hub
Kjell Roland, the managing director said that this investment was in line with a scheme to contribute to the development of enterprises and the economy of the region as a whole. The managing director of FiT said that some of the money will be used to increase their express and courier service business throughout the country. He went ahead to say that they were looking at having a warehouse facility close to the JKIA airport that will take care of the courier services and that they will also set up shops within the city and in Nairobi as well, which will all act as spots for pick up and points for purchasing fleets of delivery motorcycles and vans as well as drop points.
Mr. Shah said that since Kenya is a transit hub for a lot of African countries, it was a good idea for them to focus on services for temperature control warehousing which has also helped in procuring pharmaceutic movements for humanitarian purposes around the region.
A valuable partnership with Gavi
Gave is a private group that is dedicated to protecting the health of people and saving the lives of children by increasing people’s access to underused vaccines and access to them for children living in extremely poor countries. The organization has established logistics partners and set up distribution centers throughout the world. They used this platform to distribute vaccines throughout these countries with depleting living conditions. Gave was also contacted by FiT in 2019 to help them with delivery in some areas in Uganda to ensure that these services got to all the poor rural areas and underserved districts.
It is expected that this investment made by Norway will contribute to the creation o a lot of job opportunities around the continent and specifically the underserved countries or regions in some of these countries while providing them with better logistic services that will help several businesses with the humanitarian and agricultural sector inclusive. Good governance will also be promoted due to Norfund’s participation in transforming the standards of household businesses into effectively run organizations.
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