Cementing progress in Alimosho with Omozuapo

When twenty-nine-year-old Francis Omozuapo launched his company in 2013, he was not thinking of the sweeping global forces of urbanization, development, and informal or slum settlements that were transforming Lagos.

He didn’t know that we are currently witnessing the largest mass migration in human history. He was unaware that in many West African countries, 50% of the population has already moved to urban centers, or that over 70% of all urban dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa live in slums.

But he knew an opportunity when he saw one.

He had just graduated from a “Bottom of the Pyramid incubator” program run by the Lagos State Government’s Ministry of Special Duties and the international youth-run NGO Generation Enterprise. The months-long program took place at the government-run vocational training facility in Igando, Alimosho. There he learned not only the basics of calculating profit and building a budget but also “design thinking” skills. The program’s focus on immersive, hands-on learning meant that Francis and his peers were sent to apply what they had learned via daily field work: mapping their community’s assets and needs to identifywhere they might “add value” with a new business. 

Francis observed that his community of Alimosho, Lagos’s largest Local Government Area, was developing rapidly. Banks and new office buildings were appearing in the area, resulting in a host of new opportunities to meet the needs of an aspiring and rising middle class.

Previous Generation Enterprise cohorts had launched successful microenterprises targeting this new and growing customer group. For example, a young man named Mayowa David, who had been sleeping in a local church and struggling to support a wife and young son, used his Generation Enterprise experience and the tailoring skills he’d picked up at the government vocational courses in Igando to launch Mayorlinks. This fledgling clothing company provided entry-level custom business attire to Alimosho residents trying out for jobs at local banks. Their Mayorlinks suits got them through their interviews and first white collar jobs.Mayowa now earned over N45,000 per month, having increased his income by 20x and his savings by over 30x.

Francis looked at another angle: the construction projects popping up all over Alimosho, as businesses moved in and local workers moved up in the world, upgrading their housing situation or moving into new developments. In the Generation Enterprise training and test phases, he researched and launched Omozuapo Cement, a small depot providing bags of cement and tile for local building projects. He started with just a couple bags of cement from a larger supplier, but made sure to visit local contractors, learn about their needs and upcoming projects, and offer delivery.

Cement is used to hold bricks and other building materials together. Concrete is made when the clay and limestone of cement are mixed with water and a granular aggregate.Unfortunately, such building materials are often out of reach for the lowest-income slum dwellers.

Carl Queiros, Program Development director for the NGO Habitat for Humanity, noted: “In rural communities, the poor who cannot afford to buy modern building materials commonly used in developing countries like cement, tiles, baked brick, iron roof sheets, steel, glass, etc., are still able to house themselves by utilizing traditional and local materials such as mud/earth bricks, clay, wood, reed, bamboo and grass/thatch. Though rustic, these structures provide decent shelter.

In the city, traditional materials are often in short supply. Therefore, those with little or no income have no material resources to build with, except for garbage — discarded wood, steel, plastic and cardboard become the raw materials of urban poverty shelter. Unlike the traditional materials that can be made into decent shelter, it is almost impossible to turn discarded city rubbish into durable, good quality, low-cost houses.”

The danger of poor quality building materials, especially during heavy rains, has been highlighted in World Health Organization bulletins and international newspapers, including a New York Times profile of theGuediawaye slum outside Dakar, Senegal, where residents live on as much as 13 feet of garbage in order to stay above dirty water.

There, as in Lagos, where over 70% of the population lives in over 40 growing slums, residents strive to upgrade their housing whenever they can afford to, moving to whatever cleaner, healthier areas are available and saving up to make incremental improvements.  Francis reasoned that he could work with local small contractors to make materials available in affordable quantities, accessible right in Alimosho.

His coaches at Generation Enterprise helped him sketch out a vision for growth, drawing inspiration from the case studies of Lafarge in India and Cemex in Mexico, who are providing cement, financing, and expert services to small contractors and do-it-yourself homebuilders.

Support came from Generation Enterprise’s full-time corps of Business Development Officers. Francis got to know and trust ItunuAdekitan and Femi Emmanuel, who made regular site visits, provided on-the-job coaching (often working in the business alongside him), and collected his financial records. These Officers sent his data to the Generation Enterprise headquarters for analysis, working with the NGO’s Enterprise Portfolio dedicated coaches and directors, including a Cornell business student, TariTeme, and a Harvard Business School student, Anna Ying.

Their vision: to grow Omozuapo Cement into a construction and home improvement destination providing sustainable-wage jobs in multiple developing areas of Lagos (and beyond). 

The first step for Omozuapo and his partners and supporters at Generation Enterprise was to boost the revenue and profitability of Francis’s existing small outdoor plot and okada delivery service. Together, they are pushing to more than triple Omozuapo’s capacity, build stronger relationships with suppliers, and provide a network of trustworthy expert services for customers to access.

Francisis excited to build something that could last, grow, and help him take care of his wife, children, and future employees. For now, he spends N6,000 per year on his own housing, with two rooms and one bed for the family. He loves the idea of joining the many Alimosho families that will soon be able to upgrade their home environments, perhaps with the help of Omozuapo Cement.