Ecobank Nigeria Partners AFC For An Arts Exhibition
….Excited Over multiple Awards For It and Group
By Emmanuel Uffot
In line with it’s Corporate Social Responsibility activities, Ecobank Nigeria has gone into partnership with Africa Finance Corporation ( AFC) to host a 10- day Arts Exhibition in Lagos.
According to the bank, the International exhibition which is intended to promote Africa’s rich arts and artists, will display hundreds of art works from emerging artists.
The +234 Art Fair will hold from Friday March 22, 2024 to Monday April 1, 2024 at Ecobank Pan African Centre (EPAC) at 270 Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue Victoria Island, Lagos.
Explaining the objective of the the arts exhibition, Ecobank Nigeria Managing Director/ Regional Executive Bolaji Lawal said the shared objective of the bank and AFC to hold the exhibition is basically to ” project Africa’s creativity, including visual artists by highlighting and developing talents and providing platform and opportunities for them to showcase their works locally and globally”.
Also commenting on the partnership, President/CEO of AFC Samaila Zubairu underlined the importance of the exhibition which he said align with the strategy of AFC’s strive to empower and elevated Africa’s youthful population through job creation, skills development and rapid economic development. ” We are proud to collaborate with Ecobank to help drive Africa’s creative industry forward, by creating a platform to promote African art and artists locally and globally”.
The art exhibition fair will be curated by Solo Gallery, a foremost Africa’s art collections.
Apart from showcasing artwork, the fair according to the organisers, will focus on enhancing the creative skills of participating artists through workshops with renowned local and international artists.
Again, the exhibition entitled ‘+234 Art’ will combine Nigeria’s dialling code with the concept of art to project what regional art looks like today and how it interacts with the larger are community.
In another development, the bank is excited for the multiple awards for 2024, which saw the Group winning Best Bank for SMEs in Africa in 2024, while the Nigerian affiliate clinched the award for Best Foreign Exchange Bank.
The award convener Global Finance said Ecobank Nigeria emerged the winner through volume of foreign exchange transactions, market share, breadth of offerings and global coverage as detailed in the finance house documents and media reports.
Global Finance reel out other criteria for the award to include ” reputation, leadership, customer service and technology innovation”.
For Carol Oyedeji, Acting Group Executive Officer, Ecobank International, the award to the Group and Nigerian affiliate is in recognition of the strength of Ecobank’s support for Africa’s Small and Medium Size Enterprises ( SMEs) to enable them thrive.
On the award for the Nigerian affiliate, she noted that this was achieved despite the volatile foreign exchange challenges. ” Ecobank Nigeria displayed the highest level of transparency, maintaining high transaction volume and retaining its market”.
