Manufacturers raise investments by 32% on rising confidence

It was the usual hum of conveyor belts and the pounding of hammers at an Agbara, Ogun State-based factory. Outside the factory was a set of newly arrived machines that could process 4,500 semi-finished food items into finished products in 15 minutes. The food processing machines cost $3.6 million to import from China in 2023 and contained smart tools that would require less manual labour. There was palpable excitement among factory workers who knew the machines would make their jobs easy without displacing any of them. “We acquired these