Thursday 13 June 2019
BUSINESS DAY
19
MADE in aba Aba CFC unutilised 11 years after inauguration GODFREY OFURUM
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he need to au t o mat e t h e Aba finished leather and g a r m e n t sectors of the economy to ensure that operators produced seamlessly was instrumental to the establishment of the Common Facility Centre (CFC). However, the facility, commissioned in May, 2008, to aid entrepreneurs in leather works and garment making has become a wasted project, as no concrete action has been taken to make it functional. The centre at the moment requires funds and skilled manpower to enable it achieve the aim it was establishment. Bu s i n e s s d ay c h e ck s revealed that the majority of shoemakers based in Ariaria area of the city, w h o e a r l i e r p ro t e s t e d the location of the centre at Industr y Road, have refused to use the facility, consequently leaving it unutilised.
C h r i st i a n Nnaj i a ku , managing director, Kenzy Shoes, obser ved that shoemakers are yet to understand the purpose b ehind the s etting up of the centre and urged the CFC management to enlighten its members on the facilities available at the
centre and its importance to their production. According to him, members need to be enlightened. “Majority of us are not aware of trends in the sector and if we must compete effectively, we need to imbibe modern trends, which include the use of
modern machines and participation at workshops and seminars,” he said. For Okechukwu Williams, president, Leather Products Manufacturers Association of Abia State (LEPMAAS), an association of shoe, belt and bag makers in
Aba, the CFC would serve the Aba finished leather sector better if it is made a training centre, rather than a production facility. He attributed the underutilisation of the facility to its location at Industry Road, which he said is about 10 kilometers away
from Ariaria, the present location of the Aba finished leather cluster. The ingenuity of Aba artisans, especially, the garment and finished leather sectors, attracted the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNID O) in partnership with the Federal Government, to set up a common facility centre (CFC) in the city to support the clusters to further develop their skills. The strategy behind the setting up of the CFC was to gather sectoral and geographical concentration of enterprises, faced with common opportunities and challenges and with t h e p r i ma r y o b j e c t i v e o f e x p l o i t i n g e x t e r na l economies through collective effort and sharing common facilities for enhanced processing of their products. It is to also serve as a centre of excellence for cap a c i t y - bu i l d i ng a n d provision of cutting edge technology for competitiveness enhancement.
Revisiting N120bn Aba shoe industry ODINAKA ANUDU
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he Aba shoe industry is getting bigger. The majority o f a r t i s a n s a re small and medium players struggling to compete with Chinese products, with little resources. Many Nigerians underestimate the potential of the industry. One million pairs of shoes are produced by more than 80,000 leather makers in Aba each week. Wi t h 4 8 m i l l i o n p a i r s produced each year at an average price of N2,500 a pair, the industry is said to be worth up to N120 billion. T r a d e r s f r o m We s t African neighbours storm the industrial city every w e e k t o bu y d i f f e re nt product designs, just as Southern African schools are beginning to place orders directly from the shoe makers. Canadians, Europeans and the Chinese are also in the party, placing orders themselves directly or through their Nigerian proxies, BusinessDay was told in Aba. “We are already struggling to meet demands,” said Ken Anyanwu, secretary of the Association of Leather and Allied Industrialists
of Nigeria (ALAN), who produced Nigerian armed forces shoes in 2016. The business is going digital, with sales now online. The Aba leather industry i s m a d e u p o f s h o e s, trunk boxes and belts. It provides employment for tens of thousands, with many specialising in different stages such as designing, patterning, cutting, skiving, stitching, peeling and finishing. It is
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made up of clusters such as Powerline, Imo Avenue, Bakassi, Aba North Shoe Plaza, Omemma Traders and Workers, ATE Bag, and Ochendo Industrial Market, comprising input supplers, among others. However, the industry is in thriving in chaos as the majority of shoe makers in the industrial city are poorly structured and are not registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission. Exports are
made informally, making tracking and planning difficult. Their machines are crude and much of their work is still done by human labour. The more advanced shoe makers in Lagos are mostly foreigners, who design their shoes abroad and then import Completely Knocked Down shoes back to the country for finishing. “ This is where the problem lies. We in Aba have no good machines,”
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Anyanwu of ALAIN said. He said this is why the majority of Aba shoe makers are not meeting demands and are over working themselves once orders are placed. “It is a problem already for us because if a customer comes and we can’t meet demand, he will go elsewhere. The industry needs retooling,” he said. Nigeria and Ethiopia have things in common in terms of leather. Ethiopia is home to 56 million cattle, which provide ready raw materials to shoe makers. But Nigeria has 131 million cattle, goats and sheep, according to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture (2011 figures), with more shoe makers. The country is the second most populous (with 105 million people) after Nigeria with almost 200 million people. Nevertheless, Aba shoe makers import animal skins from China and many parts of Africa and Europe. “What happens is that the tanneries in Kano and Kaduna process animal skins and sell them as leather in the global market, earning foreign exchange,” said Chinatu Nwagbara, @Businessdayng
coordinator of Made-inAba Project, who produced shoes for Olusegun Obasanjo in 2016. “So we go to China and other countries to buy. Sometimes, we buy our products and re-import,” he said. More investments are going to Ethiopia. Between October and December 2016, Ethiopia attracted over $500 million in FDI to the shoe and leather industry. About 124 investors willing to invest $3.5 billion indicated interest to swell the export-oriented shoe market, according to the E t h i o p i a n I nv e s t m e n t Commission (EIC). Ethiopia exported $33.7 million worth of footwear products, mainly to the United States in 2015, one million lower than the preceding year. Through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the US-Africa trade law that allows duty-free and quota-free access into the US market, Ethiopia shoe exports jumped from $630,000 to nearly $7m between 2011 and 2012, a more than tenfold increase, according to statistics from USAID.