Author: user user

Healthcare venture capital firm EHA Impact Ventures has announced a $100,000 follow-on investment in medical technology developer Ananya Health. The capital will support efforts to secure product clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The injection marks the third investment by the fund in Ananya Health. The transaction reinforces its strategy of providing patient capital to female-led businesses addressing key healthcare challenges across Africa.

Ananya Health is developing a battery-powered cryoablation device designed to freeze abnormal cervical cells before they turn cancerous. Traditional treatment requires specialist physicians, cryogen gas, and high capital expenditure, which restricts preventative care in low-resource settings.

The portable device eliminates operational constraints, enabling any clinician trained in pelvic examinations to conduct the procedure. Patients can receive treatment from nurse-midwives at primary healthcare centres rather than facing referral to specialist hospitals.

‘Every clinical milestone we have hit was built on the assumption that this device must work for a midwife in Nairobi and an OB-GYN in Chicago alike,’ Ananya Health CEO Anu Parvatiyar said. ‘The reinvestment from EIV moves us closer to FDA clearance to ensure we can distribute this device to patients everywhere and prevent suffering from a manageable disease.’

In Nigeria, leaving the country has become one of the most ambitious investments a family can make. It is an expensive one.

Savings accumulated over years are converted into tuition fees, visa applications, professional examinations, relocation costs and the first uncertain months abroad. Parents who once invested their hopes in land, shops or businesses increasingly invest in something less tangible: a family member’s access to another economy.

The language may be japa. But the economics are more serious. Migration is no longer simply about escape. For many Nigerian households, it has become a form of economic strategy.

The calculation is straightforward. Where will education produce the highest return? Where will professional skills earn the greatest value? Where can one person’s relocation improve the prospects of an entire family? These questions are helping to reshape the Nigerian dream.

The ambition was once to become wealthy enough to build a successful life at home. Increasingly, the first major investment is in acquiring the option to build that life somewhere else. The numbers tell part of the story.

In the year ending June 2024, an estimated 120,000 Nigerian nationals moved to the United Kingdom for the long term, making Nigerians the second-largest non-EU nationality group arriving in the country during that period, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics.

The route itself is revealing. Study has become more than education; it has become an economic bridge. Official UK statistics show that Nigerian nationals received 37,090 sponsored study visas in the year ending December 2025, a sharp recovery from the previous year. At the end of 2024, 89,022 Nigerian migration journeys held valid sponsored-study leave in the United Kingdom.

‘Every country exports something. Nigeria exports oil. It exports agricultural products. It exports services. But increasingly, Nigerian households are also exporting their most valuable asset: people in whom families have already invested years of care, education and ambition.’

But the more interesting story begins after departure. Nigeria received approximately $22 billion in personal remittances in 2024, according to World Bank data. That figure exposes an uncomfortable paradox. Nigeria loses people, then counts on some of them to send money back. The household that spends heavily to finance a daughter’s master’s degree abroad may eventually receive remittances from her. The family that supports a son’s relocation may later depend on him for school fees, medical bills, rent, business capital or the next sibling’s journey.

Migration, in this sense, can become self-financing. One departure creates the resources for another. This is why the debate about migration cannot be reduced to brain drain. The more consequential question may be whether Nigeria is experiencing an investment drain.

Every country exports something. Nigeria exports oil. It exports agricultural products. It exports services. But increasingly, Nigerian households are also exporting their most valuable asset: people in whom families have already invested years of care, education and ambition.

The destination country receives the worker at the point where someone else has paid much of the cost of producing that human capital. Nigeria receives the remittance. The migrant receives a potentially higher return on skills.

The family receives support. Everyone, in the short term, can benefit. But the long-term question is harder. What happens when the most attractive investment available to an ambitious household is no longer a business, a farm, a factory or a professional career built in Nigeria-but an exit strategy?

That is when migration stops being merely a personal decision. It becomes an economic signal. It says something about where Nigerians believe opportunity compounds. This does not mean migration is a failure. Nigerians abroad contribute knowledge, investment, networks and remittances. Many will return. Others will build businesses that connect Nigeria to global markets.

The problem is not that Nigerians leave. The problem is when leaving becomes the country’s most convincing development strategy. A healthy economy should give its citizens choices.

People should be free to leave because they want to explore the world-not because remaining feels like accepting a lower ceiling on their ambitions. Nigeria’s challenge, therefore, is not to stop migration. It is to become a country where staying is also a rational investment.

Where a degree can produce a competitive return at home. Where building a company is not merely preparation for relocating it. Where a young professional can imagine a globally competitive future without first needing another country’s labour market to validate their value. The Nigerian dream should not be measured by how many people leave. Nor by how much money they send back.

Its deeper measure should be whether the country can once again persuade its most ambitious citizens that the future they are investing in can also be built here. Because when leaving becomes a family’s most reliable path to economic advancement, migration is no longer simply a movement of people. It is a movement of belief. And perhaps Nigeria’s most important economic challenge is not bringing everyone home.

It is rebuilding enough confidence in home that leaving is no longer the only dream that makes economic sense.

The federal government has tightened controls on overseas travel by political appointees and senior public officials, requiring prior clearance from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF) before they can embark on official foreign trips.

The new directive also requires the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand proof of approval from the Secretary to the Government of the Federation’s office before processing official travel documentation, including diplomatic, official and service visas for government appointees.

The measure was contained in a circular signed by George Akume, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and circulated to ministers, permanent secretaries, heads of government agencies and other senior officials.

The government said the directive was necessary because some officials had continued to travel abroad on official assignments without obtaining the required authorisation. The circular said officials were acting ‘contrary to extant government directives and established administrative procedures regulating official travels outside the country.’

The requirement applies to ministers, heads of ministries, departments and agencies, members of government boards and committees and other federal appointees. It exempts cases where a different arrangement is expressly permitted by law or directed by the president.

The government said the policy was aimed at reinforcing control over official foreign engagements, improving accountability and limiting unnecessary public expenditure. It cited several previous directives issued between 2012 and 2023 governing foreign travel by ministers, agency heads, board chairmen and other public officials.

Despite those measures, the government said violations had persisted. ‘Despite these directives, instances of non-compliance continue to be recorded,’ the circular said.

The latest move comes as the government faces increased scrutiny over people and organisations claiming to act on behalf of the federal administration, including foreign engagements conducted in Nigeria’s name.

The controversy surrounding Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, who described himself as Director-General of the purported Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), has intensified questions about how individuals can present themselves as government representatives without clear evidence of official authorisation.

The new rules, however, extend beyond such cases and apply broadly to federal government appointees travelling abroad on official business.

Under the directive, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is to make evidence of valid approval from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation part of the documentation required for official travel-related requests. This includes applications for Notes Verbales, diplomatic facilitation and official foreign travel.

Foreign missions and embassies accredited to Nigeria are also to be notified of the requirement. Applications for official, diplomatic or service visas by government appointees are expected to carry the relevant travel approval where applicable.

The government said the move would give foreign missions an additional mechanism for confirming that officials seeking official travel documents had received authorisation from the Nigerian government.

The directive also places responsibility on the Auditor-General for the Federation to verify compliance during audits. Officials who travel abroad at public expense may be required to produce evidence that the trip had received the necessary clearance.

Public expenditure associated with unauthorised foreign travel will also face scrutiny, with the government warning that such spending could be reported under applicable financial and audit rules.

Accounting officers, permanent secretaries and heads of federal agencies have been instructed to ensure that public funds are not released for official foreign travel unless the required approval has already been obtained.

The circular said the requirement was intended to support ‘due process, centralised coordination of government business and prudent management of public resources.’

The SGF directed ministers, permanent secretaries, accounting officers and agency heads to enforce the policy immediately. It also said the new instruction would override administrative practices that conflict with the directive, while leaving existing laws and regulations on official foreign travel intact.

The circular was distributed to senior officials across the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government, as well as security agencies, financial regulators, revenue bodies, anti-corruption institutions and government-owned companies.