Experts urge public-private collaboration to drive industrialisation

Captains of industries have urged public and private sectors players to work together to accelerate Nigeria’s industrial growth.

This was echoed at a CEO roundtable at the 30th Nigerian Economic Summit on “The Path to Rapid Industrialisation”.

Farouk Gumel, vice chairman, Tropical General Investment Group, stated that Nigeria was filled with many small-scale industries that should be transformed into large-scale factories.

“We ignore many small-scale industries we have because we focus on the big things. We want to see this mega factory with robots, artificial intelligence, and those things that wow us. What do we do to these small industries in the kitchen that will need to move to a small facility, to a factory, and eventually to a mega-industry?” He said.

Highlighting some of the barriers to Nigeria’s rapid industrialisation, Tola Adeyemi, CEO, KPMG WestAfrica, said that the lack of consistency in government policies stops the country from catalysing industrial growth.

“Each time we have a change of government, it’s an assumption that the previous guys didn’t know what they were doing. So, the new guys reinvent. I call it a bias of reinvention rather than implementation. So, we keep starting all over again. Therefore, lack of consistency is one problem,” he said.

He added that achieving industrialisation would only stem from intentional efforts by stakeholders in the public and private sectors.

“Industrialisation doesn’t just happen by chance. It’s a choice. It’s a result of deliberate and consistent action over time, driven by courage and conviction. It’s determined by countries that they will produce most of what is consumed, and export based on competitive advantage,” he said.

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These submissions echo the theme of the 30th Nigerian Economic Summit, ‘Collaborative Action for Growth, Competitiveness, and Stability’, aimed at uniting policymakers, business leaders, and stakeholders to address economic headwinds.

In 2014, the Federal Government planned to revolutionise the industrial sector, bringing its contribution from four percent to about 10 percent of the GDP within five years.

However, in March 2024, Nigeria’s Industrial Production Index fell to 3.3 percent from 3.8 percent in December 2023, data from CEIC, a global database, shows.

In the second quarter of this year, Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 3.19 percent (year-on-year) in real terms from 2.98 percent in Q1 2024 and 2.51 percent in the same period last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The manufacturing sector contributed 8.46 percent in the second quarter of 2024, lower than the 9.98 percent in the first quarter of 2024.

Winifred Isichei, CEO Bonita Foods, stated that certain gaps must be closed for industrial growth to take off.

“There are frameworks around access to capital that must be unlocked. There’s infrastructure to be developed so that industrialisation can piggyback on that. The more industries there are, the more businesses there are, the more human capital will be built. And of course, there are other things like technology, regulatory policies and government-led efforts to drive growth for businesses like ours,” she said.