 Thanks for staying with us. Alternative Investments is a label for a disparate group of investments that are distinguished from long only publicly traded investments in stocks, bonds, and cash, often referred to as traditional investments. The terms traditional and alternative should not imply that alternatives are necessarily uncommon or that they are relatively recent additions to the investment universe. Alternative investments include such assets as real estate and commodities, which are arguably two of the oldest types of investments. Alternative investments also include non-traditional approaches to investing within special vehicles such as private equity funds and hedge funds. These funds may give the manager flexibility to use derivatives and leverage to make investments in liquid assets and to take short positions. Today, we'll be exploring alternative investment opportunities in Nigeria. Please, let's hear what you have to say. You can join the conversation on SNS and SMS or WhatsApp 20818384663. You could also tweet at us at WeishoAfrica1 with the hashtag Weisho. The beautiful part about SNS is that we're not just talking off the top of our heads. We have a guest, like I said, who is an expert on the subject matter in the studio with us today. But then, ladies, let me hear from you first. Please, what do you know about investments? Let me start, but let me go to authentic investment first. Let's start from traditional investments. Jennifer, what do you know? Jennifer, let's hear from you. It's funny enough, it's not true. Because I have already shamelessly admitted I'm a rookie in investments. So, I think I've just been winging it, to be honest. Because I don't like to keep money in the bank because it's not doing anything for me. It's just lying there. So, I like to put my money in things. And I know before I've always just saved money until I said to learn that you can actually invest your money. Long-term investment, short-term investment. And I've done a couple of investments. Some of them are good. Some of them aren't so good. But I know currently, I'm currently investing in stocks. I have investments in real estate. I also have some in agriculture. So, it just depends. So, I just try to spread it across. So, they are mostly long-term investments for me. They are not things that the short-term ones that I do are very risky. So, those ones, I keep it to myself. So, in case Casa Labos... Anything happening. ...only me, I'll be the only person to... I think I'm in the same boat. So, look, I was actually... I don't even know the right words to use. So, there's this particular, I'm not going to call the name. But it was AgroTech, right, that I invested in. And man, hey, you can see. Any time I remember that thing, the thing, it hurts me so bad. Because the person that actually puts me on it was very credible. And I know he had had, like, turned over from me. That's all. When he told me, I'm like, okay, great, let's do this. And to be honest, to be honest, I actually got some returns from me. But you know how these things work now? He got to me. I'm like, okay, now give me back my cup. Until today. Do you know the funny things? We're still getting emails to say that. Oh, sorry, guys. We're still working on it. And I'm like, are you guys joking? It's almost two years now. Let's just move on. That's the same thing that happened to me. In fact, to me and my sister, one of my uncles, my mom's brothers, came back from, you know, the Abroad. I can't invest. I say, first of all, I'm not the right person. Unfortunately for him, the investment I was doing at the time is similar to what you're talking about. And he put his money today, two days later. Two days later. I had to pay him back. Wow. Yeah, somehow. You know, those guilt trips. Yeah. I had to pay him back because, I mean, he came because of me. So I know a lot of people need this knowledge. And I'm one of them. Issy, do you know anything about investments in Nigeria? Or even globally? I have a vague idea about investments in Nigeria. I have a lot of interest in mutual funds, basically. So I like to play safe. I don't go through the risky route. And I don't believe in Ponzi schemes. So if you come with a Ponzi scheme, I think that's probably what must have happened to you, Alera. So I believe in Ponzi schemes. When you come with that, I don't listen to it. But however, I think that, yes, this is something that we all need. And my first question is really going to be on how to talk about it from the tech point of view, basically. Okay. So Muiwa Olowo Koroko is the head, partnerships, alliances, and events at ArtSplits. An innovative platform which gives you the opportunity to co-own fractions of rare and valuable artworks and music. In return, you can sell these fractions, or splits, and end from it. He has been privileged to design and execute several brand strategies for leading local and international brands, some of which includes InterSwitch, Coca-Cola, Toto, Nigeria, PLC, Monster Energy, GSK, NBC, A.B. Invert Crafts, Haines, Royal Emerald, Morocco's Kingdom Official Airline, amongst many others. Thank you for joining us in the studio live today, Mr. Muiwa. Thank you. My pleasure. Welcome. You're very welcome. We have a lot of questions to ask you, so we hope that's your... And I'm excited that I'm the one sitting closer to him. So welcome. Welcome. Yeah. Okay. So first and foremost, let's go into the discussion. Can you just walk us through what investment is like in Nigeria? Well, you had rightly summarized the entire landscape, investment landscape in Nigeria. So when you talk about investment in Nigeria, what comes to your mind the start? We're going to talk about that. Until recently, when people are now in the IP in a real estate, and then I also talked about agriculture and stuff. So people have actually... That's been the way to ask about being. And we've also seen that some of these financial instruments about time had failed in terms of, you know, what's called a global middle term. Usually that affects them, you know, considerably. So we've had instances where people... We had times when we were like a committed society because they lost huge money, you know, in stocks and the likes. And other things that happened to you, you know, because you are so susceptible to all those kind of, you know, economic forces and stuff that would happen. So as you see it's actually globally the same it is in Nigeria because some of these financial instruments, talking about bonds and stocks and stuff, usually won't fail. But in terms of returns on some of its investments, it's been good over the years, right? It's been, you have two digits sometimes in some cases. You have something, sometimes below 10% above 10%. Then sometimes it's also declined and stuff like that. So there's been... The market force has already determined how these things go. And many people would not understand the fact that some of them are... Some of these things were actually long-term, mid-term to long-term. Many people in Nigeria, which also makes... Sometimes it came to actually happen in Nigeria, because people are looking for something in the immediate. They want a quick turnaround, because all these, you know, get-rich-quicks-can syndrome will affect people. So people don't understand the concept of investments. Those who understand it are profited from it over the years because they understand it like that. In one year, there might be a down sound. Sometimes in two years, this might actually spike. So you have a particular company that stocks, sells for like, say, three Naira, who had a lot of shares then. After like five years, you select ten Naira. Then at the point, it just drops. It goes like two Naira. People, like, have lost money. And people understand this concept, they understand the fact that you need to do it like five, ten, twenty years. Some people need to invest, but for themselves, but for the children, right? So, unfortunately, the generation that we currently have, we believe that once you invest, like another one month, it's actually done something. So which makes Ponset Skins actually thrive. So that's actually the concept of investment in Nigeria. And so, I mean, that affected lots, you know, when it comes to investment. But generally, the landscape has been, the winds have been across the globe. But Nigeria still doesn't understand that it's a different war game when it comes to investment. So, I mean, that's just been the dynamic and the story of a time. But the instruments were in the same, anyways. So talking about exploring alternative investment opportunities right now, even in Nigeria or globally, what are those kinds of investment that we can get into? I mean, a lot of us are not making money here and there. We don't want to leave our money line fallow. I mean, you've talked about bonds, talked about stocks. Are there other forms of investment things that we can track? I know that sometimes, I mean, if you talk about stocks, if you want to track stocks, you need to be up to date with what is happening in the news, what is happening in these industries. So if Apple, for example, is losing maybe today in the economic standards, it means that whatever stocks you have with Apple will be dropping, whatever stocks you have with Microsoft or Google will definitely drop. And you also need to understand how the market works. So for people who don't necessarily have the time to keep up to date with those information, what kind of alternative investment opportunities you think are out there or would you suggest or advise? Okay, so I think that would give it what you're talking briefly about by business, the business that I represent. So what we've observed over time is during the global meltdown and all the different filmmakers that have been across the world, we found that there's a particular asset class that seemed not to be affected by all these forces. And that is art, talking about visual arts and other forms of art. Prior to now, we believe that this is the exclusive reserve of the rich, the wealthy, because of course I don't want to have the means to collect artworks worth 10,000, 20,000 to millions of dollars and keep it as more of a store value for them. Now, so what we have seen over the years is that asset class has been consistent over the years and the growth has been really, you know, significant and can actually be trapped. So we felt like as a business that I mean coming from a group of investors and investment company, so we felt like it is important to begin to open the eyes of Nigerians through this alternative investment platform or solutions. So we started with art and the company called Asprey. So we started with art and what we have done successfully is to make access possible to people who are in the lower realm of the ladder who would enable the person to begin to invest in this asset class that prior to now we thought like is reserved to the rich. So I'll give you an instance. So an artwork, for instance, that was done by Li Beno would cost a heart bridge on 100,000 US dollars. Now, a single person cannot possibly do that. So what we have done as a business is to look at the concept of co-ownership in investments. So don't call it crowdfunding. We'll look at co-ownership because I will explain now how that differs. Now, what that co-ownership does is this artwork costs 100,000 dollars. We as a business, you know, would come back to that 100,000. We'll break it to 100,000. So the value of 100,000 dollars will be divided into 100,000 units. So that's like for as low as a dollar. Instead of you entering the investment at 100,000 dollars, you enter the investment with a dollar. Right? So, the more you can buy, the better for you. Now, what happens is, immediately you buy those, we call them splits. So we call them split 100,000 splits. It's as low as a dollar. So we go to 20 cents. We develop that to 20,000 dollars. 20 cents per split, right? You buy the split, you bid for it, and you say that a lot of people want to buy particular assets. So sometimes you have 500 people bidding for a particular artwork. So it begins to drive the value of the assets. You invest in with 20 cents. If you are not careful, somebody who has bid only 22 cents will beat you and buy them over and you lose out of opportunity. So it is that you allow you to bid and you determine the market, the low price for that particular asset. So by the time all of you put your funds into it, you invest your buy split. The question now is, this is a physical artwork. Who is going to keep it physical for some of the assets? So what we are going to do is, we do this on that solution called the lease concept. This concept is where somebody will bid to own that work for a period of time. Now that is to create immediate return on investment for the investors. I didn't get to make sense what I'm saying. So people bid for that lease auction and then the winner, that takes the work. The proceeds from that lease auction should be shared amongst everyone who has invested in that asset during the split auction. So that is immediate return on investment. Now you hold that asset with you for a period of time and watch the market for some time in the value of the artwork. It begins to appreciate the market because people are trading, people are now in secondary markets are putting extra margin on their investment are selling it off. Even that is happening, it's automatically configuring the new price for that asset. Now in another five years or say one year or three years as a case maybe you want to keep your asset for a long time. The one of the artwork begins to appreciate the market. Now if you want to sell your investment you exit it and have your returns. One thing we have done so is that even that lease I mentioned earlier it goes out every two years. So that means every two years you are getting dividends on your investments. It goes into your portfolio, it increases your portfolio values and then the act talk itself is appreciated in the secondary market. So that way we have opened up the opportunity to people to invest in what the so-called elite and rich would usually invest in that people never knew about. So that's one of the social we have brought up for and we are about a year now, we are about a year now and I can tell you that from what we have done so far they have been going over 1.5 million in terms of transaction happening within the platform. Yeah dollars, thank you. The app is even starting to use dollars. And the reason is of course to ensure that we are able to edge the investment against Naira so that you actually control the competition. That is one of the investment opportunities. I wonder what I also saw was the music. If you notice Afro beat has become adopted across the world. So you see people wanting to collaborate with times with Debedo, with Skid and stuff. And people who understand the landscape are making huge money from these artists across the world going to streaming platforms. Today our data is that there are 68 million people who are subscribed to all the streaming platforms called Spotify, Apple, Amazon and the like. People are streaming music and artists is any money from those streaming. So the artist is just keeping the money and you are just vibing to the guy's music and you are just there. You are just making extra money from these guys. So we also discovered this other aspect. So what that does is that a project is coming up from an artist. The artist will require some funds to do that. So what we do is pull in funds, all of you come and buy and split into the album before it is released. Now once the investors put in their funds and the album is released every month when the artist is any real artist. Percentage that they own of that album is being paid into their wallets month on month. That is a month on month and your investment and you can still keep your primary asset because you have both units of that particular album so you keep it in perpetuity. So if you keep it for like 50 years even when you are no more your children keep any from that music catalog. So this is the opportunity that is available to Nigerians and Africans. I was actually going to ask how people invest in music. If you are not maybe sponsoring the event or something like that. But yeah, I will come to you Alera and ECS. I am sure you have questions to ask but then let's take a short break so you have started the break. If you are just tuned in we are exploring alternative investment opportunities in Nigeria with Mouniwa. Please let us hear what you have to say. Remember you can join the conversation send us an SMS or WhatsApp to you can also Twitter us with the hashtag so Alera. So the question I have for Mouniwa is what are the parameters that a new and skeptical investor. What are the parameters that you think people like us should look out for when we want to make an investment decision. So in making investment decisions you need to look at one, what is actually the incident of players field. Two, you need to go into researching to understand how the asset class that you want to invest in actually matters. So for instance if you look at let me give you an instance in music for instance realities have been delivering volleyball $13.8 billion in the last one year. It is projected that by the end of 2023 it should be about $18.7 billion by the end of 2027 it is going to be about $18.7 billion right. So that is across the globe. If you bring it to Africa it is still running in its hundreds because of course nature of stuff. So you begin to look at the trends and one of the key things I would just say about music is the fact that music realities have the capacity of delivering 2 digits for you in all honesty because it is not economic forces that determine buy and sell and trading doesn't have to be affect that class. And then think of it for technology. So it has actually been brought up and it makes it easy for anyone to invest. So there is a place where you can look at it? Exactly. So there are dashboards where you can actually go and study what is music realities to artists. You know when they stream particular numbers you know what is going to come into investors. So that is the same thing for arts. In the last 16 years it has been consistent around 16 billion to 60 billion US dollars in terms of you know the value of arts in the market space. So it keeps growing steady and of course there is always almost a year growth about say 2% 6% growth. So these are the things that you need to begin to look at. So you need to actually take your time to spend it in the industry. I am really excited to hear that at least the customer can see a projection because I mean I would want to have an idea of how is it going. And I think another thing again is that focusing on the trend also helps because you have to know what is happening in the economy. How has it been affected just to know. Thank you. My question is related to your interest and your passion basically. Because your interest and your passion is to create an alternative and ensure that there is alternative investment opportunities for every African basically. So let's look at it from a holistic point of view. How can a tech savvy individual or a non tech savvy individual actually synergize to create our explore alternative investments opportunities. Okay so for tech savvy individuals for instance I really mentioned that there are several concepts that can actually leverage a credit to do that. So I will mention something about co-ownership and I think it is important that anyone who is a tech savvy person will look at so what is that thing that we can commoditize and they can use the credit to actually drive. So once you are able to identify anything of such nature it could be even real estate. So imagine where people would say I want a piece of land in vanilla island for instance. I know that I would never be able to find it. I am not saying I mean considering my panaceas at the moment I am just saying I am a rich person. What you are not doing is okay you know what. How can I use technology in this case maybe an hour it could even be a hour or something then it creates something that allows several of us to actually co-own these assets then watch it grow over time and then we trade it. So that is something that can be made possible for a tech savvy person because in this case you understand the concept of technology you can use that to drive it. Now for an average person who is not a good tech savvy what a person would depend on more largely is I mean I don't want to talk about crowdfunding or stuff like that but people like that would look like okay so who and X, Y, Z can I put together to put his funds and they do this and we know we are going to keep it at store value for us and know what time we trade it and that way is an investment for them. So it is a function of looking around you so I mean looking at opportunities around you and constantly I can commoditize and I can use technology to actually leverage to drive the market process to drive the value and also all that I want to put this way more like driving value, this is a project to look at what are the basic things because the principle is the same whatever it is they are doing what matters is what the edge can actually add to it what solution can you add to it to actually improve it and make an investment so that is what I would like to say okay so you see you are going to say something okay sexual okay now let's look at it from the other point now so let's say I have I have an artist for example be it music or physical artwork and I want to put out my artwork for people to invest in do I get money from that how does that how does that work for artists for instance who want to get money from his work or want to invest in his work there are different ways to go about it there are different businesses or different platforms that do quite a few anyways but I think and I referred to you business earlier such business allow you to put your work up for splits you can actually buy into it so you can actually use such technology platform to drive the sale of your asset and you can go to auction houses so you put your work there because maybe you did work 20 years ago I have an assistant artist who had come to say this work was done in 1903 I said I want to actually put it off because I need money and for that artist it's an investment because he had done that work like over 30 years ago and then he brings it over and goes into an auction platform people auctioned for the work they buy into it it makes his money so that kind of work will price depending on what the actor has been doing in auction over the years it's around $20,000 and maybe the artist is late and the asset of the artist want to trade it they are talking about hundreds of thousands because the works are not announced they are not available to the demand cannot recreate those works so the person actually goes and then sells such are the ways of course they will make money because it's an investment that has been kept for years if I'm Mr. N well well we have very rich culture and tradition the versatility of our culture and tradition is vast so how can we leverage on this to explore other avenues for investment okay so you have mentioned our cultural heritage and stuff so we are looking at instances talking about collectibles, memorabilia in this case like cultural collectibles we are looking at hold coins that people would die to have right so these are some of the things that we can actually also put as investment class like I said always just look around and say what exactly can we even turn into an asset and make money of so talking about our cultural values and our current exchange for instance and which is one of the things that I talked about even tourism see as an investment because we have sites, we have stuff that can convert into so many things that can yield profit for people over the years because investment in tourism wrap cultural sites and stuff that can actually invest their money in and then bring in tourism in exchange for all of these things it's an investment, it's a long time investment so I mean thank you so much you see these are the things that we can actually look at like I said look around I wanted to just quickly add something this conversation is making me feel happier remember when I mean growing up when you tell your mom or your dad that you want to be an artist now please don't just lose hope because now there is an opportunity for your artwork to actually see a lot of for people to get to see your artwork and for you to make money because now the African, the Africans are actually pushing for this and encourage your children to go into art please please do make a lot of mistakes really is something that we need to consider and start doing let's talk about NFTs so I know that in Nigeria right now we have some sort of policies and none of that against non-fungible tokens and things like that so has that in any way affected alternative investments especially in art and music? yes it has and also looking at the volatility of that of that space as well we've had instances a couple of months ago when people almost ran mad because even though there's something there so that's one of the things that the government is also trying to prevent because we understand the fact that one can't be traced they can't be tracked really as you would really do and they also know the fact that many people are waiting for some very weird weird purposes and stuff like that so it's affecting the landscape really because like I also mentioned we are also starting to see how are we sure that this is here to stay of course digital currencies are going to be there digital tokens are going to be there they couldn't keep tokenizing items and stuff like that, digital assets so this is going to be there forever but we also need to understand the fact that we need to protect the sanctity of the investment landscape as well and also ensure that it's properly regulated because anything can happen with that space and nobody can hold it against it so it's something that government is going to handle that still so there are some that are completely open to it as you know what we can still control it but I think it's something we started to study over time we try not to corrode the investment in that space but try not to dissuade anybody from doing it it's a function of iron risk I use sometimes so I mean it's something that's very open okay alright I know that this is a conversation that if we continue there are so many parts that we can actually agree but then I think ladies do you have any other questions to ask I mean going to art I think I don't think she should know about that because I know about how many young people actually want to study art they have the interest, they have the talent however my child has to be a doctor my child has to be an engineer my child has to be an accountant now the art and music industry is actually creating an avenue for us to make money so encouraged it's a good field to encourage anybody to go into so that you can be a billionaire interesting I mean there are quite a number of artists today who sell seven digits and the energy I wonder what's going on in this you know I went to one young chap about 27 and he was telling me that if you're not willing to buy this please take a walk be confident like all those my daughters joined see one of the questions how do you account for individuals who are probably fraudulent because we have people who couldn't be fraudulent and we come across to you as being genuine article in terms of investments so what would you advise someone to look out for so that you don't fall into something like a ponsor scam okay so you have to look at like I mentioned earlier we look at the pedigree of the establishment that they are affiliated to associated with it might seem correct it might seem tough notch if you look at the pedigree yeah so it might seem that's why I've always said like there are a lot of things that you can actually do I mean check unfortunately we don't always have time to do all of this but like I said look at the pedigree it's very important look at you can also check them against robberies and stuff because some of these resources are not regulated we need to actually be very careful and look at them because if one of you approve them it takes a lot of approval to allow such organizations to run in this country or anywhere they climb so robberies are the likes who also appear to turn in thank you so much it was quite an insightful conversation we had and then we look forward to having more conversations like this as we go on thank you ladies for joining us tonight as well alright before we go do ensure you follow us on instagram at wayshowafrica you can interact with us further drop a comment and most importantly follow all our social media engagements and remember to like, share, comment and watch your friends and family to watch if you missed today's quotes here it says again the individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator and this is by Ben Graham see you tomorrow at 8pm as we bring another great conversation see you soon bye