GE: Africa needs “the best intellectual horsepower”

Is the fact that you are based in Hong Kong a strategic GE decision?

No, I could do my job from anywhere in the world, I chose Hong Kong for a number of practical factors: I travel constantly, it’s got a world-class airport, it is close to markets that are very important to us.

But those markets are no more important than Africa or Latin America so it’s not about market access – it’s about the practical aspects of how you operate globally when you have to be based somewhere.

When you signed the Country to Company Agreement with the late president of Nigeria, Umaru Yar’Adua, in 2009, did you anticipate the growth that you’ve seen in the past five years? Are you where you wanted to be?

 Well, certainly it was the aspiration. I think that I wasn’t smart enough about the situation in Nigeria or the situation in other African countries to really predict that outcome, but the aspiration was based on a fundamental belief in what the countries needed.

I think that when you look at a country the size of Nigeria and you see the lack of electricity, the screaming requirement for healthcare, particularly in rural and remote areas, and things like that – that has played out exactly as we thought.

We knew there would be demand but fulfilling that demand, executing on projects, getting stuff done, our ability to do that was a little harder to predict. Aspirationally, we are where we thought we could be.

What do you attribute the success to? The GE team, the government, the business environment?

 A good partner, and good partners. The government has had to put in policies that will help: are they all in, are they all done, is there a need to do more?

At the end of the day, you’re not going to have a dramatic infusion of power-generating capacity until you have more assurance around the fuel supply, an ability to sell your power at a reasonably predictable price or a power purchase agreement.

When you have those two things, it makes it a lot easier for people to invest: without either of those two things it becomes a much more speculative venture. So there needs to be more clarity on both ends. You also need to continue to focus on human capital.

There’s a lot of talk about how much financing is required to meet the infrastructure needs in Nigeria and in other African countries. There needs to be an equal amount of discussion about the human capital because you need to have both.

You will not have foreign direct investment or financial investors unless they see human capital that’s worth investing in because somebody has to execute these projects, somebody has to do the project development work; somebody has to get the plant up and running. So human capital is just as important as financial capital and you’ve got to have both to make it work.