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Heirs Insurance Travel Festival Draws Thousands, Signals a New Era for an Inclusive African Travel Ecosystem

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Heirs Insurance Travel Festival Draws Thousands, Signals a New Era for an Inclusive African Travel Ecosystem

– Ambassadors Advocate Easier Visa Processes for Seamless Movement Across Africa

– Travel Creators Push for a Borderless Continent, Demand Visa Fee Refunds to Ease Financial Burden

Lagos, Nigeria – 1 December 2025 — The inaugural Heirs Insurance Travel Festival delivered an unforgettable experience on Saturday, November 29, at Harbour Point, Victoria Island, Lagos, attracting thousands of travel enthusiasts, diplomats, creatives, entrepreneurs, and young Nigerians. The event not only celebrated cultural diversity but also amplified calls for equity and reform in Africa’s travel policies and mobility systems.

 

Far beyond a cultural gathering, the festival served as a strategic advocacy platform, spotlighting the foreign policies, bilateral agreements, and structural systems that must evolve to unlock fair and expanded travel opportunities for millions across the continent. Through this initiative, Heirs Insurance Group positioned itself as a leading voice championing a more inclusive and accessible African travel ecosystem.

 

Centred on the theme “Promoting Cultural Diversity and an Inclusive Travel Ecosystem,” the festival opened with a high-level panel discussion on “Passport Power and Diplomacy.” Panelists included Ambassador Manuel Innocencio de Lacerda Santos Junior, a Brazilian diplomat with five decades of global service; Ambassador Jose Bamóquina Zau, Angola’s Ambassador to Nigeria and former Deputy Minister; and media executive Stephanie Busari, CEO of SBB Media and former CNN Senior Editor. The session was moderated by veteran broadcaster Jonathan Hanson.

Panelists underscored the urgent need for simplified visa processes, strengthened border systems, and harmonised travel frameworks to enable freer movement for Africans within the continent.

 

A creator-led session titled “Where Your Nigerian Passport Can Take You,” moderated by Heirs Insurance Group’s Chief Marketing Officer, Ifesinachi Okpagu, featured leading travel creators Zim Erobu, Adenike Tejuoso, and Steven Ndukwu. They advocated for a borderless Africa with fewer intra-African travel restrictions and called for visa fee refunds in cases of rejections—arguing that current systems unfairly deepen the financial strain on African travellers.

 

Speaking at the event, Ifesinachi Okpagu noted:

“The Heirs Insurance Travel Festival provides a platform to address critical challenges within the often-overlooked travel ecosystem, ensuring that travel and migration policies are equitable for all. We believe access, safety, and empowerment should be universal. This is why we are building platforms and partnerships that make global mobility and migration attainable for everyone. We also want to unify travel enthusiasts on one platform, aligning with our mission to improve lives.”

The festival marks a significant step in elevating conversations around Africa’s mobility challenges, while highlighting the company’s commitment to experiential engagement, innovation, and social impact.

About Heirs Insurance Group

Heirs Insurance Group is the insurance arm of Heirs Holdings, the leading pan-African investment company with operations across 24 countries and four continents. With a rapidly expanding retail footprint and a robust digital presence, Heirs Insurance Group—comprising Heirs General Insurance Limited, Heirs Life Assurance Limited, and Heirs Insurance Brokers—serves both corporate and individual customers nationwide.

The Group continues to champion financial inclusion and drive digital transformation in Nigeria’s insurance sector, reinforcing its mission to democratise access to insurance for all.

 

Sahara weekly online is published by First Sahara weekly international. contact [email protected]

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Harmony Garden Alerts Public as Ex-Staff Faces Probe for Alleged Financial Fraud

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Harmony Garden Alerts Public as Ex-Staff Faces Probe for Alleged Financial Fraud

 

Harmony Garden and Estate Development Limited has raised an alarm over an alleged multimillion-naira fraud involving one of its former staff members known as Fibiyisola Mustapha.

 

In an official statement issued by the company’s management, the firm disclosed that Fibiyisola Mustapha, whose photograph and phone number were earlier published has been disengaged from the organization and no longer represents the company in any capacity, either as staff or consultant.

 

According to Harmony Garden, Mustapha allegedly breached the company’s financial system, illegally accessed its account, and diverted funds running into millions of naira. The company added that the matter has been formally reported to the Nigerian Police Force, which has commenced investigations into the alleged theft involving Mustapha and Jorge Haus Consulting Limited.

 

The statement further noted that, rather than cooperating with investigators to resolve the matter, Mustapha allegedly resorted to blackmail and intimidation tactics. Harmony Garden claimed she boasted of leveraging her relationship with social media personality “VeryDarkMan” in an attempt to discourage the company from pursuing the case and seeking justice.

 

Despite the unfolding drama, Harmony Garden and Estate Development Limited reaffirmed its commitment to transparency, due process, and the protection of its clients, partners, and the general public.

 

The statement was signed by the Management of Harmony Garden and Estate Development Limited.

 

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Africa’s Moment at the G20: From Margin to Mainstage

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Africa’s Moment at the G20: From Margin to Mainstage.

By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com

“How South Africa put the continent’s development at the centre of a historic summit and why the world cannot afford to look away.”

For decades Africa has been discussed at global gatherings as an addendum to other priorities, a footnote in communiqués, a sidebar at finance tables, a line-item in aid budgets. This week, under South Africa’s stewardship, that CALCULATING COMPLACENCY was CHALLENGED. For the first time in the Group of Twenty’s history, the G20 Leaders’ Summit convened on African soil (in Johannesburg on 22–23 November 2025) and with that simple fact the political geometry of global development shifted. The summit did not merely symbolically recognise Africa; South Africa used the platform to insist that Africa’s success is an indispensable engine of global stability, prosperity and sustainability.

This was not window dressing. Pretoria arrived with a clear, UNAPOLOGETIC PLAYBOOK: put debt, disaster resilience, green transition finance and inclusive growth at the top of the agenda; insist on concrete instruments that re-calibrate the global financial architecture in ways that favour developing countries; and compel the G20 to reckon publicly with the reality that a rising Africa is not charity; it is mutual interest. President Cyril Ramaphosa opened the Summit invoking Ubuntu (“I am because we are”) and framed Africa’s priority as existential to the G20’s mission of global stability and shared prosperity. That framing was not rhetorical flourish; it was an organising principle for a summit whose declaration and accompanying ministerial statements placed Africa-centred solutions at the centre of actionable commitments.

Why this matters is straightforward and urgent. Africa is home to the world’s youngest and fastest-growing workforce, vast arable land, and some of the largest untapped renewable-energy resources. Ignoring these assets is not merely unjust – it is self-defeating. The continent accounts for a disproportionate share of unmet infrastructure needs, climatically vulnerable populations and accelerating debt-service burdens that crowd out spending on health, education and industrialisation. Unless the international system changes how it finances development (and unless private capital is convincingly mobilised alongside smarter public instruments) Africa’s demographic dividend will risk becoming a global liability instead of an opportunity. The South African Presidency’s Africa Expert Panel and the accompanying reports handed to G20 leaders served as a precise roadmap for that transformation.

South Africa’s presidency pressed for PRAGMATIC TOOLS, not PLATITUDES. Among the priority asks were a G20-backed debt-refinancing or debt-resilience mechanism coordinated with the IMF and World Bank; a much larger, predictable pipeline for blended concessional finance to crowd in private investment; and strengthened disaster-risk financing and early-response capacity to protect vulnerable economies from climate shocks. These are not boutique recommendations. They are fundamental fixes to a system that has long treated Africa’s finance needs as episodic crises rather than predictable structural deficits. The G20 Finance Track and ministerial communiqués in 2025 explicitly addressed these themes — a tangible sign that the conversation has moved from moral exhortation to institutional design.

The summit also produced hard political theatre – proof that South Africa was willing to use the G20’s spotlight to TEST ENTRENCHED POWER DYNAMICS. The adoption of a leaders declaration on the opening day, and the content of that declaration, exposed genuine fault lines among the world’s leading economies on how far to go in rebalancing the rules of global finance and climate responsibility. The contestation underscored an uncomfortable truth: reordering global norms for fairness will be as much a political struggle as a technical exercise. Yet the mere fact that these issues were negotiated in Johannesburg (with African priorities front and centre) is a strategic victory.

Voices with gravitas reinforced South Africa’s case. António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, commended the Summit’s theme and urged leaders to confront inequality and accelerate renewable-energy deployment in Africa; Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, has long argued that Africa can be pivotal for global growth if capital is redirected toward productive investment on the continent. Scholars and policy experts (from Masood Ahmed to leading think-tanks and the AfDB itself) have repeatedly warned that without predictable, affordable financing and better debt architecture, African countries face chronic underinvestment in human capital and infrastructure. Those warnings were woven into the Summit’s policy fabric, not left on the sidelines.

But rhetoric and report pages will not, on their own, produce change. The litmus test for Johannesburg’s legacy will be implementation: will the G20 convert words into new instruments that lower the cost of capital for African projects, underwrite early-warning systems for climate disasters, operationalise debt-refinancing facilities, and create measurable channels that crowd private investment into bankable African projects? South Africa has set the agenda; now the INSTITUTIONAL HEAVY LIFTING must follow. That requires transparent timelines, independent monitoring, and the political courage to deploy concessional resources in ways that catalyse (not substitute for) private investment. The Africa Expert Panel’s proposals provide that scaffolding; the G20 and its member institutions must now build.

There are inevitable skeptics. Some will say the G20 is a flawed vehicle for structural reform; that it privileges geopolitics over development, short-term optics over long-term system change. Yet this critique misses a simple fact: global governance institutions only change when coalitions force them to. South Africa’s leadership in bringing the G20 to the continent and insisting on an Africa-first policy prescription demonstrates how leadership, moral clarity and diplomatic skill can generate a political opening. The question now is whether other members will match rhetoric with resources and reforms. If they do not, the failure will be not of South Africa’s resolve but of global will.

For Africans, the Johannesburg summit should be a moment of tempered optimism – not complacency. The G20’s new focus on debt sustainability, green finance, and pipeline development offers a rare alignment between technical options and political opportunity. But Africa’s leaders must also match international action with domestic reform: better project preparation, stronger institutions, transparent procurement, and regional integration that creates scale for investment. When African governments pair disciplined governance with a reformed global system of finance, the continent’s transformation will accelerate. In short: the G20 can open the door – but Africa must walk through it with purpose.

This is South Africa’s historic gift to the continent and to the world: a blunt, unambiguous reminder that Africa’s fortunes are not peripheral. They are central to a just and prosperous global order. The Johannesburg summit has set a precedent – a test of whether the world’s most powerful economies will finally act in concert to make that centrality real. If the commitments made here are followed by concrete instruments, predictable finance and honest political follow-through, we will look back on this moment as the pivot from a world that talked about Africa to one that invested in Africa’s future. If not, history will record a missed opportunity of global consequence.

Africa’s success is not a REGIONAL FAVOUR; it is a GLOBAL IMPERATIVE. South Africa has, in Johannesburg, placed that imperative on the G20’s table. Now the hard work begins: to convert WORDS into CAPITAL, PLANS into PROJECTS, and PROMISES into MEASURABLE PROGRESS. The lives and livelihoods of millions depend on the answer.

 

Africa’s Moment at the G20: From Margin to Mainstage.
By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com

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Dream Big, Start Small: ILÉ IYÁN CEO Invests in UNILAG Students, Igniting Hope and Entrepreneurship

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“Dream Big, Start Small: ILÉ IYÁN CEO Invests in UNILAG Students, Igniting Hope and Entrepreneurship”

 

In a remarkable act of giving back and inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs, Sanni Sheriff, the visionary Founder and CEO of ILÉ IYÁN ORIGINAL, visited his alma mater, the University of Lagos, and awarded academic scholarships to students residing in Room B312, Jaja Hall the very room where his entrepreneurial journey began 15 years ago.

What started as a humble hustle selling sandwiches from his hostel room has grown into ILÉ IYÁN, an iconic culinary brand with a global footprint. This historic return is not just a personal milestone for Chef Sanni, but a powerful message to students across Nigeria: dreams are valid, no matter how small the beginnings.

 

“When I started in B312, all I had was a dream and determination. Today, returning to this room to invest in the students living here means more than words can express. It’s proof that resilience, focus, and hard work can take you anywhere. My hope is that these scholarships empower the next generation to dream bigger and start where they are,” said Chef Sanni Sheriff, CEO and Founder of ILÉ IYÁN.

 

 

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Sanni Afeez, the General Manager ILÉ IYÁN Nigeria also added:

“At ILÉ IYÁN, we believe that true success is measured not only by business growth but by the impact we create in our communities. Our recent scholarship program at the University of Lagos reflects this commitment. Revisiting the very roots of our visionary CEO’s journey and investing in the students of Jaja Hall is more than symbolic, it is our way of inspiring hope, fostering education, and encouraging entrepreneurship among young Nigerians.

As part of our 2025 Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, this program represents the beginning of a broader mission to empower the next generation with opportunities to dream, learn, and lead. ILÉ IYÁN remains dedicated to being a bridge between heritage, innovation, and social impact.”

 

Through this initiative, ILÉ IYÁN continues its commitment to education, entrepreneurship, and community development, building not only a leading West African culinary brand but also a legacy of impact and inspiration.

 

Beyond Business: Cultural & Social Impact

Under Sanni Sheriff’s leadership, ILÉ IYÁN ORIGINAL is becoming a cultural institution, celebrating Nigerian heritage, food, and togetherness, it cements its place as a cornerstone of Nigeria’s cultural renaissance and a must-visit destination for locals and tourists alike,

By investing in UNILAG students, ILÉ IYÁN is closing the loop, paying forward the same support and community spirit that helped Sheriff himself when he was a student.

 

A Beacon of Hope

* For Students: The scholarships and competition are more than financial aid, they are a launchpad for entrepreneurship, especially in the culinary space.

* For ILÉ IYÁN: This is not just CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), but a core part of its mission. It reflects the brand’s roots and founder’s journey.

* For Nigeria: Initiatives like this highlight how business success can be leveraged for social good, nurturing talent, preserving culture, and building futures.

 

Looking Ahead

As ILÉ IYÁN continues to grow (most recently opening a 200-guest capacity headquarters in Lekki Lagos. Nigeria, the company’s investment in education signals a broader ambition: not just to be a culinary leader, but a cultural and social platform. Through scholarship, mentorship, and opportunity, Sheriff is ensuring that the next generation of UNILAG students and young Nigerians more broadly have access to the tools they need to dream big, start small, and build something lasting.

 

 

 

 

EKAABO SI ILÉ IYÁN

EYIN OLOLUFE WA

For ILÉ IYÁN dining experience and food delivery kindly visit or contact any of our locations

 

 

📍ILÉ IYÁN ADMIRALTY WAY

 

4A WOLE OLATEJU CRESCENT OFF ADMIRALTY WAY LEKKI PHASE 1

(OPPOSITE KINGFISHER/MARCOPOLO RESTAURANT)

 

📍ILÉ IYÁN ANNEX

PLOT 6 DR. MUIZ BANIRE STREET OFF BISOLA DUROSINMI ETTI DRIVE LEKKI PHASE 1

ONLINE FOOD DELIVERY, RESERVATIONS KINDLY CONTACT

KINDLY CONTACT: 09024475402

or simply send an

Email: [email protected]

Our social media channels are

Instagram: @ileiyan_ng

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Twitter: @ileiyan_ng

TikTok: @ileiyan_ng

 

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