Trade liberalisation within African countries has been on the front burner for a while. At the just-concluded Intra-African Trade Fair in Cairo, Egypt, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) President and Executive Director, Stakeholder Management and Coporate Communications, Dangote Industries Limited, Mansur Ahmed gave reasons the initiative should be supported by African leaders if the continent is to become an economic power house. Group Business Editor SIMEON EBULU was there.

You have traversed various sectors of the economy. What has it been like?

It’s been very interesting, sometimes a bit frustrating, sometimes inspiring. I started from the mid- sector – that’s the academy moved to the business sector, then to the public sector and the private sector; then the public sector and then back to the private sector. It’s been quite interesting to see the various facets and dimensions of the economy and the politics and to see all the great opportunities we have missed and the great potential we are yet to realise.

You talked about missed opportunities. What are some of them?

We can recall that in the late 1990s, we started an exercise on envisioning a new Nigeria. That was called Vision 2010. It looked at Nigeria in the medium term setting 2010 as a sort of target. It was a tremendous opportunity to begin a transformation, to begin a nation building process. Many Nigerians across all sectors and all cadres participated.

I remember there were probably close to 300 participants on that exercise led by variably seniors public and private sector leaders and over a period of about a year, the team drew a vision for Nigeria, which addressed most of the key issues Nigerians are still facing. Unfortunately, that was the first missed opportunity because the document was completed in 1997 and handed over to the head of state then, General Abubakar Abusalam (rtd).

But he obviously didn’t have much time because of the transition programme to civilian rule. But when the new government settled in, we didn’t know what happened, apparently the document was just laid aside and so we missed a great opportunity to begin a nation building that I think by now would have placed us well close to the targeted destination.

The Vision 2010 document included looking at building a united democratic harmonious nation driven by the economy, by the private sector, with the public sector acting as the facilitator and the enabler. I think if we had done that by now, we would have a great economy. Certainly, that vision is still the vision and that’s the missed opportunity I’m talking about. We’ve tried other things; we’ve tried NEEDS; Vision 20:2020 and now we trying the Economy Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP). Now the interesting thing, to me, is that all these exercises and subsequent ones, to a large extent, are inspirations from that Vision 2020.

As an operator in the private sector, what  are your major challenges in the Dangote Group going by your submissions?

The big challenges for Dangote Group and indeed for the business sector, generally, is that our economy is still  not sufficiently conducive for rapid investment and private sector group. To me, the public sector plays too much dominant role in economic liaison and many of the efforts being made to move the economy forward, to create opportunities for growth, particularly growth that is inclusive, tends to be stunted by the fact that the public sector seems to lead the process, control the process, embrace the process in a way that there is no enough room for the private sector to operate and to really exploit the private sector capacity and the private sector initiative.

Dangote Group seems to have overcome these constraints because it is the biggest investor in the country’s economy. How was this achieved?

To be honest, I think we have to admit that Dangote Group, particularly the President, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, is a unique man. Where most people see challenges, he sees opportunities and unlike many investors he is not held back by a sense of impairment; he moves despite the challenges; he invests despite what other investors will see as monumental incapacities to investment and I think that is why he has uniquely been able to do a lot of the things he has been doing.

Dangote Petro-chemical presents a veritable platform to achieving the intra-African trade initiative. How have you been able to capitalise on this to espouse the opportunities that can come out from that industry, even if it has not been fully completed?

The process is just starting. The petrochemical industry is like a mother industry; it creates opportunities for a lot of other downstream industries to grow and, certainly, it creates opportunities for a lot of other business. It links with other substances, so what we are doing is basically setting the basic industry or hub as it were to refine chemical products, fertiliser and gas.

Those are the things that feed so many industries; fertiliser feeds the agricultural industries; petrochemical feeds a lot of downstream industries like the plastic industries; pharmaceuticals and many other industries that use either the output or the iutput of the industries. So, our approach is to create this hub and as we do, we expect that investors who are watching on the downstream will open to us and, perhaps, on the interrelated industries for instance, agriculture, we want to acquire not only the fertiliser, but plastic, bagging industries for packaging.

This is the first intra-Africa trade and exhibition. What opportunities can your organisation get leveraging this platform?

I think for Nigeria, it is important that we are able to recognise what this kind of cross border and international trade requires. It is also important for each country to really understand what it wants to get out of it and to prepare itself to focus on those opportunities that it can create for its economy and also to make sure that it works with its business sector with the private sector to ensure that those opportunities are realised because at the end of the day trade does not happen between countries, it happens between business, between people. The role of the government is to facilitate, to create conducive environment where trade happens. That means ensuring your legal and regulatory environment is trade friendly; that means that your operatives of the economy, your regulators and administrators, understand their role and play that role well. There is a strong partnership or collaboration between the business sector and public sector aimed at achieving the goals of the economy, particularly with regards to trading with other countries. We need to understand what we’re going into, what opportunities exist, what risks exist because there are no opportunities without risks and, therefore, we need to be prepared to be in a position to mitigate the risks and to exploit opportunities.

What constraints do you foresee for Africa coming together? How do you see your competitors or other nations where your firm operates resisting your entry?

We are happy where we see opportunities to invest in other foreign countries or to trade with partners in other countries and we see tremendous opportunities in this.

If we take cement as an example, this is the area that we have built significant competence and ability to produce high quality cement at very low price. We know that the base element, the basic input for cement is limestone.

Nigeria has tremendous limestone deposit and we are using that to create the largest cement industry in Africa. Today, we are the largest African producer of cement. And, so naturally, if the system works, if the trade relationship works, it will work to our advantage. It will also give us the opportunity to invest in our country.

So, apart from free trade, we also want to see an environment for easier investment so that we can go and invest in those countries that we see opportunities where there are limestone and they have demands which is not being met.

So, this openness creates a lot of opportunities for us in that spectrum. I think that out of the legacy of colonialism, certain countries have taken control of some of our sister countries in Africa and their business sectors, their industrial sectors have been taken over.

So, even when we try to invest in other countries, we see a lot of push back, most of it is generated by these competitors who are not essentially indigenous investors. We are not worried about the competition. What we are concerned about is when certain incentives are allowed through this businesses or when hurdles are placed in our way to exploiting those opportunities.

This is why we keep saying that if African free trade agreements work, the first focus of our government must be to ensure we have a regulatory environment that is fair and equitable. We have a regulated environment that works based on agreed rules of the game not based on some unacceptable  practices.

Now there are others, like infrastructure. Where you lack good transport infrastructure, trade suffers because the cost of your product is simply raised significantly high and this is common across the region. Transport infrastructure in the whole of Africa is extremely important and it aids a huge cost to products delivered. There are people who think up to about 35 percent addition of cost is settled by African businessmen within their organisation as regards transportation.

Does your organisation have or feel any responsibility to help other businesses become like it? Do you have any plans on mentoring?

Nobody goes out to grow their competitor; that is certain. But we are happy to create opportunities for up and coming small businesses and that is why we are very supportive of the small and medium scale enterprises so that they can also grow because if they grow then we make our own business easier because then we can now focus and not have to do a lot of the small things that others can do.

Yes, we are very committed to working with the small and medium industry sector to provide strong linkages between the small medium industry sector and the large industry sector and this is something that also the government ought to do more seriously.

A lot of people complain that a lot of the intra-Africa trade is informal. This is certainly true in the West Africa zone, but I feel that people who trade informally do so because the constraint of formal trade is beyond them, so they will not be able to break through all the barriers.

Thank God the government has set up a committee, the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) and it is trying off course in the economy and again our problem has always been sustainability; you’ll start something and then there’s a change of government and leadership.

What is the experience of Dangote Group in the free movement of goods and persons within the continent?

Our President, Aliko Dangote, in particular, has been probably the loudest opponent of this arrangement whereby African countries can’t seem to allow ease of movement even at levels that it is obvious will be of advantage to both countries. I think it is obvious he has made a lot of progress because even this visa on arrival used to be non-existent, if you want to go to Kenya or Zimbabwe, you will spend three weeks waiting for visa, but today at least thank God it’s getting better.

If we are going to really integrate our economies, we have to allow movement of talents across the border easily, particularly if you are investing newly in a country outside your own, you would want the opportunity, at least at some level to make some of your own people to go there so that you can transfer whatever experiences and knowledge that you need.

It’s even worse with regards to goods because even if you take West Africa for example, which has the ECOWAS liberalisation trade scheme, allowing for the movement of goods without much hustle, what we know is that today, if we are moving goods across our countries from Nigeria to Benin Republic, to Togo, to Ghana, the headache is enormous and most of this headache is not because the rules of the game are set to create a headache, but because the people who execute those rules, unfortunately, see themselves in a total different light.

The regulators are men of our country that see themselves more as gatekeepers rather than as enablers and facilitators. But, particularly for trade and investment, the role of the government is to nurture, facilitate, encourage. It is saddening that when you go to apply for that visa or that permit to establish your business you’ll find out the regulators tend to see themselves as gatekeepers.

So, that’s the kind of attitudinal change that has to happen if trade and investment is to flow across Africa. If you travel around Europe, you can pass six borders without knowing that you’ve passed any border, all you need is your ID card or your small chip, you’ll just put it against the little window and you pass.

The 2019 budget has been presented to the National Assembly? How well has the manufacturing sector benefited from government policy this year and what is your advice on moving forward?

The manufacturing sector, in particular, derives the greatest benefit from three perspectives. First from continuing investment on the infrastructure: road, rail, telecoms.

These are all vital to efficient manufacturing, particularly efficient business in manufacturing. Infrastructural services are so vital to successful investment and so we look at the budget and see how much will be going into infrastructure and then we can say we are moving in the right direction.

The second perspective is the other end of our business. We produce to sell, so we want to see actions being taken by the government which puts more money in the hands of the individual because if you increase the buying power, then off course our market will grow.

The third element is to look at the monetary and the physical policies and see how to these adapt or aid our business.

Take monetary policy for instance, stability in exchange rate is very bad. For many reasons, our manufacturing sector is heavily dependent on imported input, raw materials, component, spare parts, machinery, everything. A huge dependency on importation and, therefore, we want to make sure that the foreign exchange is stable. So, every time the dollar go up, it means our import cost increases and we may not have the capacity to increase our prices; so profitability diminishes.

Any budget that introduces new structures on foreign exchange will be negative but any budget that puts more money in the hands on the population will be positive. So, that’s the sort of thing we are looking at in any budget, of course we are not just looking at the cost, but we are also looking at the specifics because some of those constraints are more argent than others.

For instance, if you look at the total expenditure on infrastructure we want to see significant progress on the rail and the road distribution on the reports because those are the things that create the biggest impediment to the success of the operations.

We are engaging the government; we are engaging the National Assembly. The last budget to be concluded has made tremendous progress in terms of increase investment in the infrastructure side and we hope that this budget will sustain that of the investment side.