Africa Day at the WKÖ, with our Lagos work in mind

Africa Means Business, said the screens beside the stage, and the Julius Raab Saal of the Austrian Economic Chambers was full. It was AFRICA DAY, Austria's largest business conference on Africa, which the chamber runs with ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA, its foreign trade arm.

Our work runs between Vienna and Lagos, so a room that puts Austrian companies and African markets together is home ground. In Lagos we designed water treatment for a coastal estate. As a BWT Partner for Nigeria, we carry that work into West African projects.

Some 900 people came from Austria and 30 African states. Wamkele Mene, Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area secretariat, took the lectern for one of the day's keynotes. Carmen Goby, the chamber's vice president, named environmental and water technology among the openings for smaller firms, and water is our line of work. Sessions on infrastructure, energy and finance followed, and ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA's commercial counsellors from across Africa held meetings all afternoon. One panel set Africa's fast-growing young firms against its old growth stories.

Coffee and lunch were booked before the doors opened. Cards came home from a medical technology company, a consultant on funding programmes and ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA's office in Algiers. We left early. INVEST OR DIE was waiting in Linz that evening.

A free trade area opens a market. An estate in Lagos still needs clean water on the day its first family moves in, and that part is ours.

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