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“We found it cumbersome to convince people to come to Nigeria,”says Henry Olofin, the co-CEO of Africanslink Consulting Company, Denmark”.
According to him, everybody agrees that Nigeria has a huge potential, but nobody wants to go there.Why?
Olofin explained that Nigeria’s image abroad leaves much to be desired.
Hear him: “When you mention Nigeria, the biggest economy in Africa; the place to do business. but nobody wants to go there. Everybody says ok, let’s talk about it later. Most of the time, I have sleepless nights about opportunities passing us by in Nigeria”.
In this interview, he explains the ways out for the country.
Excerpts:
Business vision
I am the CEO of Meibach Nigeria Ltd, and a co-founder of Africanslink Business Consulting Company in Copehangen, Denmark. Africanslink has been in existence since 2014.It is a combination of independent consultants. Personally, I started consulting independently, focusing on Nigeria since 2012.
My vision with this business visit is to expose and promote a brand from Denmark. And I saw the potential in Nigeria and intend to bring to Nigeria because I realise the immense potential of this product being that we are living in a very humid tropical region.So , having seen the quality of housing, especially the quality of concrete that we have in Nigeria, this is a unique opportunity to increase our safety and the quality of work in the building industry in Nigeria and construction industry generally.
Challenges
I brought an investor to Nigeria in 2013, which went quite encouraging in the beginning It took a lot of efforts to get the investors in because when you mention Nigeria, everybody says ok, let’s talk about it later. We don’t have good name out there. It is very cumbersome to talk to investors about investment in Nigeria. Everybody agrees that Nigeria have a huge potential; biggest economy in Africa; the place to do business, but nobody wants to go there. So it was very challenging. I came across this Ghanaian guy who is also doing the same thing for Ghana. It is very easy to get investors to go to Ghana.We became like brothers instantly. So we decided to close my own company; close his own company and start working together. So he is the CEO, he is a Ghanaian, I am also CEO. So both of us are the founders. We combine to run the company together. We have presence in about 20 African countries. We have independent consultants who work for us under the same Africanslink Businsss Consulting. So everybody is doing this for their countries under the same brand that we started. So variety of companies write to us on daily basis, I want to do business in Africa; how do I do it. It has ben our job but we found it cumbersome to convince people to come to Nigeria. Most of the time, I have sleepless nights about opportunities passing us by in Nigeria. Last January, I was in Ghana. I took a company I have been pursuing since 2012 there that refused to come to Nigeria there. But when the opportunities came to go to Ghana, it took them just two months to get to Ghana. Just two months!.As soon as you mention Ghana, people say there is potential there, let’s go!
The product
I want Nigeria to embrace this product, I said before, it is a concrete hardner. It is a post-curing treatment of concrete construction: floors, heavy duty floors. Usually, when you make German floor, as they call I here, it takes about 21 days before you can do anything on the floor because it has to harden. With this product, it takes only about eight days. If you use this product, your floor will remain like granite for ages; no wear and tear; no acid can penetrate it.There was a picture of concrete blocks soaked in hydropolic acid for one year , and you can still bring it out without any hole. You can’t do that with ordinary concrete without being treated with this product. It was demonstrated in Dubai. Everybody knows that desert sand can not be used for bricks or building , but this product was used in Dubai to demonstrate its efficacy. And desert sand was used to demonstrate it that you can build with it. Then you apply this hardener, you can make desert sand into building materials. What they did was that they gathered useless desert sand, mix with cement and use this product and they have a break to build with.
You see, building collapses in Nigeria because the quality of concrete or cement we have in this region is not what we use in Europe. I cant say they are bad. There are varieties of concrete, but it is not what they are accustomed to in Europe. But with the addition of this product, you can pump up your quality and have self reliant on what you are doing. You see building soak or overgrown with fungi. This is because the cement is not treated well or mixed well. Even if it is mixed well, it has lifespan. This product increases the lifespan more than five times. You just spray it with the product.
The essence of launching the product is to convince the professional bodies in the built industry that we mean business; that we are serious. Bringing investors into the country with this product, we are going to take it slowly. My destination with this product is to have a factory in Nigeria. Although I am not the producer. I am the consultant. My company is bringing this product into Nigeria as a sole owner of the right of that product just because it has to be monitored here in Nigeria. In Europe , this product is not sold to an individual. If you are not a company, you cant buy it. So in Nigeria, we have to sell it and monitor it to make sure that people use it the way they should use it. You do the right thing, you get the right result.
This company is not that far from establishing a factory in Nigeria. But I can guarantee you that if we encourage them with importation; with product use, I won’t talk too much before convincing them that Nigeria is huge. So let’s do something. It is going to happen.
The way we intend to monitor it in Nigeria is to make sure that we have organised training for the artisans to use this product: People like bricklayers, engineers to see how the product actually works and how it should be applied. When we do that we will actually go to site to see how this product are being used. Again, Meibach, as the representative of the manufacturer in Nigeria, is not just only to sell the product, we are going to engage in doing the job for people to make sure that it is done properly.
Building collapse
To solve the problem of building collapse permanently in Nigeria, first, we need to have trained personnel and we need to encourage people to work ethically. Building collapse in Nigeria doesn’t surprise surprise me. It has to happen because the way people are in hurry to make money, diverting building materials is not something you can just solve like that. At the same time, the quality of job; may aspects to touch if you want to solve building collapse in this country.
Let me say this: I have been to several buildings; government buildings, private buildings in Nigeria. Sometimes, they look so fantastic from outside. But as soon as I step inside, from the frontage, I start seeing faults. These are houses worth millions, sometimes billions! I can stand from outside and start pointing to several things that should be done differently. This comes from training. Our bricklayers are not well trained; So many people who call themselves engineers hardly know what they are doing. The quality of training is so poor that it doesn’t measure up to anything. The lack of ethics starts from when the contract is paid. Somebody wants to take 10 per cent; another person wants to take five per cent. At the end, of the day,the contractor has 70 per cent of the money. From that 70 per cent, he has to buy materials; he has to pay this, he has to pay that. And yet,he wants to make profit for his own company. At the end, something is going to suffer: materials will suffer; the wages are going to suffer. You cant just say this is a particular thing to touch and the problem of building collapse is solved about building collapse in Nigeria.You just have to touch everywhere; everything.
We wish to collaborate with interested party, both private and public. Most especially, I would like the government to take the lad in encouraging this product. Most of their buildings are so rickety…The government can afford it; bring this product in, prepare their properties, treat it correctly and see the work.
