THE LONG GONE TINAPA RESORT RE-EMERGING TO BECOME A TALENT CITY
Tinapa resort is a city with its own charter located in Calabar, a former capital of Nigeria in the south southern part of Nigeria. Calabar is the capital of cross river state, with a history of trading. It was established as a center of slave trade by the British in 17th century. At the end of slave trade, the city was a major port for Palm Oil trade and commodities exports and imports from the South East of Nigeria.
Tinapa resort was a project initiated by the then Governor of Cross river state, Donald Duke as a way to boost business and tourism in the state. Over USD 350 million was spent on initial development and the first phase of the project was commissioned on the 2nd of April, 2007. The idea is to model an ecosystem where people can have access to world class fashion, design and other related businesses with the ease on fiscal incentives. The resort has its own Social economic zone rights from the Nigerian export processing Zone authority with an advantage in immigration, offshore banking, hassle free company registration, organized custom system and so forth.
Image from https://www.tripadvisor.com/
In order to resuscitate one of the biggest investment with an SEZ status in Nigeria, a group of persons led by Iyin Aboyeji had started out to use the opportunity Tinapa resort brings by filling in the abandoned investment to solve the problems of tech ecosystem in Nigeria called Talent City. The city owned by the government is now on a concession agreement with Talent city.
The Talent city idea flowed from Andela which changed the paradigm, of the education and tech ecosystem in Nigeria. Andela identified talents and trained them to become world class software developers, providing thousands of Jobs and connecting African talents to global opportunities. However, it was hard to get the right Infrastructure, and enabling environment in order to meet with high standards due to unfavourable government policies and infrastructural deficit.
Talent city is a project being built to set up an organized structure and society for the right kind of business and talents. It is a network of charter cities optimized for the employment of tech people. The model is to work with the government and make its SEZs rights to function. The city will fill up the gaps by building a right governance framework for technology enabled services to boost tech and economic activities down south by inviting private organizations to leverage on these institutions.
The project is expected to have about 6,500 permanent residents with over a 100,000 jobs annually with an average income of USD 30,000 per year. The project is also expected to plough back USD 170M per year on revenue from commercial space, residential space and mortgages. It is 10km radius to the city center and 20 minutes drive from the airport.
Talent city is segmented into 4 phases; the green infrastructure, mixed used and residential, Business and retail, and the farmers market which will make living and working in close proximity. The topography include some recreational parks, Atlantic Ocean views, the Calabar carnival- the largest street carnival in Africa, Obudu cattle ranch and other exciting places. A startup society where people can live, work and play.
Written by Cesare Adeniyi-Martins on 8th December 2020
