IMF Building
SEEING LOCAL OPPORTUNITIES IN TIMES OF GLOBAL RECESSION
“The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any
good thing.” - Psalm 34:10
“There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity” - General Douglas Mac Arthur
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) inspired a whole nation with one of his awe-inspiring quotes, “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’’. In this time of unprecedented economic downturn, Nigeria is in dire need of people that will see and seize opportunities that are apparently elusive to the common citizens. The purpose of every difficult time is to place a demand on our creativity; the greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.
Sometimes, difficulties are just opportunities in disguise, we just need to use them as stepping-stones to find success. In the midst of gloomy economic projections and uncertainties, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that a combination of plunging oil revenues and weakened investor confidence will push the economy deeper into the abysmal sea of recession. IMF predicted that the Nigerian economy is expected to contract by 1.8 percent by the end of this year.
Interestingly, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) believes that avalanche of opportunities abound in this trying times and that it will take a discerning economic eye to see these opportunities. PwC organized a programme recently in Lagos for business leaders and executives with the theme: “Preserving Value in Challenging Times”, to help organizations maximize economic buffers and seize opportunities in the unlikeliest of places, normally overlooked even by the so-called economic gladiators and investors.
The problem with the Nigerian economy is that we have people depending more on salaries than those evolving ideas, in a concise summary, we have more ‘liabilities’ than ‘assets’ in the present Nigeria. Throughout history, in times of economic difficulty, salary earners are one of the worst hit, and they usually suffer the most. The level of unemployment in Nigeria is appallingly high and government organizations keep asking people to apply for jobs that barely exist.
The new face of Africa is in the hands of entrepreneurs and the enhancement of Africa’s economies will ultimately come through entrepreneurship. In moving Nigeria away from the present economic quagmire and fiscal depression, we need people that will evolve a new Nigeria through novel ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. It is starkly obvious that we are living in an era where the only thing that rules is an idea. The new phase of Nigeria is in the hands of entrepreneurs, we need more people that can create value, people that are power-houses of revolutionary ideas, people that will create products that will appeal to global ‘consumers’. We need to redesign a nation to reward people that are solving problems. So many people are in politics, not because they want to proffer solutions to the system, but because it has been designed to reward them.
The oil fortune will continue to dwindle until we wake up and stop blaming the government for the fall of the Naira; it is our collective responsibility to ensure that the Naira rises again. It is high time we started looking for indigenous alternatives to things we have been importing from other countries. Imagine the giant of Africa importing toothpicks! We have become great consumers in a world that favours entrepreneurship. The crisis we have presently is global and we must design an intelligent way of responding to it instead of castigating the government and their stringent restrictions. We brought ourselves to where we are today by our undisciplined and insatiable appetite for foreign goods and services to the detriment of our local contents. Let us all take full responsibility for the dwindling foreign reserves in the national treasury; we need to redesign the economy to offer global products that can sell internationally.
I am aware that our nation is going through tough times and I want to proffer solutions in my own way using the Japanese economy as a good example. The eminent taste for foreign materials has overly depleted our sense of value and has relegated our local industries to the background. The revolution in the Japanese economy was initiated by strong patriotism of the citizens to their local goods and their belief in the superiority of their local content. We need a form of social reformation that will produce Nigerians that will be patriotic to our local content and goods.
A significant proportion of the Japanese population was wiped out during World War II, including an estimated 210,000 people in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone. The economic history of Japan is one of the most studied economies for its spectacular growth. I did a thorough analysis of the Japanese economy and realised that many factors contributed to its economic growth, although some reasons are more important than others, economists and economic historians agree that all of the following contributed to Japan’s economic rise.
This includes: A strong believe in their indigenous brands, a culture of continuous improvement (Kaizen), diversification of the Japanese economy, stability in Japanese politics and patterns of policymaking, using technology and innovation as a tool for industrialisation, corporate ownership of the Japanese economy, Japanese trade policy (protection of the domestic market combined with aggressive export drives) and finally, the lifestyles, attitudes and expectations of the Japanese people that eventually released them from the economic hold of western imperialism.
A key objective in any economy is to create an industry that produces technologically sophisticated products with high income elasticity and this was actually the ‘joker’ that jump-started the Japanese economy, coupled with strong and patriotic loyalty to their indigenous products , as well as innovative products that were exported worldwide.
Kaizen is often translated in the west as on-going, continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering and business management. The competitive success of Japan in the world’s market place is greatly as a result of their implementation of the kaizen concept in their corporations. In contrast to the usual emphasis on revolutionary, innovative change on an occasional basis, kaizen looks for uninterrupted, on-going incremental change. In kaizen, there is always room for improvement and continuously trying to become better.
World War II greatly devastated the Japanese economy and after the war, Japan resolved to the practice of kaizen to help in the rebuilding of Japanese industries. Kaizen became a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity improvement. It humanizes the workplace, and eliminates overly hard work when done correctly. It also teaches people how to perform experiments on their work using scientific method and how to perform to learn to spot and eliminate waste in business processes.
I am so much fascinated by the way some visionary state governors have been turning local initiatives into global opportunities. Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra state is redesigning Anambra State with the Anambra State Investment Promotion and Protection Agency (ANSIPPA), an economic blueprint and road map that captures the four cardinal pillars of his government, namely: agriculture, industrialization, trade and commerce, oil and gas. In order of priority, the governor has made agriculture number one simply because of the vast latent opportunities that abound in the agricultural sector.
The impact of the ANSIPPA initiative is presently serving as an economic lifebuoy for Anambra, as the state has become a major rice producer with a target of surpassing the 320,000 metric tonnes level. The brand of rice from the initiative is reportedly stone free and competes favourably with foreign brands, the ‘flawless’ rice will no doubt reduce the negative impact of rice importation on Nigeria’s foreign exchange.
Finally, I would like to advise Nigerians to be part of the solution because, if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem and if we have to be part of the solution, we have to identify and engage the problems because an undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
When the only thing one can see is the problem, then one cannot see the solution. We need to renew our minds and approaches because problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious. Next week, I will be merging together the 14th and 15th sustainable development goals, which are LIFE BELOW WATER AND LIFE ON LAND. Until then, act locally but think globally.