Heads of Governments and Statesmen, CEOs of global firms, leading financiers and policy and development technocrats, attended the World Economic Forum 2014 in Abuja last week.The forum is the 24th edition of the event, with the theme, ‘Forging Inclusive Growth, Creating Jobs’. The forum provided Nigeria with an immense and unique opportunity for economic and cultural diplomacy.

There has been steady and rapid growth in the last two decades in Africa, a development that has made the continent a destination of investment.
Nigeria, host of the World Economic Forum, is Africa’s biggest economy, but facing security crisis, as insurgents (Boko Haram) in the north east has carried out series of attacks on Churches, schools and villages, with an attack on a school in Chibok on April 14, resulting in the abduction of over 200 school girls.

In a press statement, the Nigerian Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said that the theme of the forum was apt, considering Nigeria’s need to grow its economy with a vision of being among the top 20 economies of the world by 2020. She also said that the Nigerian government was looking to use the forum to seeks ways of impacting needed skills in the unemployed youths to make them employable.

It is the culmination of the efforts of Nigerian firms like the Dangote Group, The First Bank Group, Oando and The Nigerian Stock Exchange who are increasingly active in the World Economic Forum and the recent engagement of the organisation by the Federal Government of Nigeria and its economic team. More importantly, it is a reflection of the growing attraction of Nigeria to international capital as one of the world’s most rewarding new markets, following recent painful but highly rewarding set of economic reforms.

Below are some of the pictures captured by a Business-Matter.com correspondent