Nigeria's Swelling Market for Fruit Juice Concentrates and Mixes

Nigeria is a subsistence agrarian economy that depends largely on imports to meet its basic food requirements. The country imported $2.5 billion in food products in 2004, making it the largest single market for foreign agricultural products in sub-Saharan Africa.

U.S. agricultural exports to Nigeria that year totaled $444 million, up considerably from $322 million in 2003. Beverage bases (mostly fruit juice concentrates and pre-mixed products) accounted for approximately $1.4 million worth of U.S. sales in 2004.

In 2002, the government of Nigeria placed an import ban on a wide range of agricultural products to protect local industries and to conserve foreign exchange. Products banned for exports to Nigeria include: confectioneries, flavored yogurt dink, spaghetti and other noodles, fruit juices in retail packs, fruit juice drinks, fresh and dried fruits, table water (flavored sparkling and non-sparkling), non­alcoholic wines and beer, cocoa butter, powder and cakes; poultry and red meats, eggs and birds, maize, sorghum, millet, vegetable oils, fat and biscuits of any type. Prior to the ban, approximately 80 percent (about 170 million liters per year, valued at $255 million) of Nigeria's demand for fruit juice was filled by imports.

Domestic Capacity and Imports Buoyed by Demand Tidal Wave

The Nigerian fruit juice industry, producing far below capacity before the ban, increased production from just 12 percent in 2002 to over 75 percent by 2004. Demand for consumer fruit juice products, especially items in Tetra Pak containers and flexible bags, is now mostly met by domestic suppliers.

The few large food processing companies have developed or increased production for local consumption and export to neighboring countries. New firms are reported to be investing in Tetra Pak production lines. Small scale manufacturers of bottled fruit drinks have also boosted capacity.

Meanwhile, Nigeria's demand for imported fruit juice concentrates and pre-mixes has grown from 1,500 metric tons in 2002 to 17,000 metric tons by 2004 - an astounding 1,033­percent increase. This figure is expected to reach 20,000 metric tons valued at $30 million by the end of 2005. The import growth can be attributed partly to Nigeria lowering its tariff on concentrates and pre-mixes from 40 to 10 percent in 2002.

Fruit juice concentrate in aseptic packs and pre-mixes are preferred by local suppliers. Products are often placed in cold storage and transported in reefer containers at temperatures of not above -18 degrees

centigrade.              .

About 20 million Nigerians, approximately 15 percent of the country's population of more than 133 million, constitute the target market for fruit juice products. Consumption should increase as households begin to use products at home more frequently.

AII these factors mean that U.S. exporters have an excellent opportunity to enter this market. New-to-market U.S. fruit juice concentrate exporters can enter the market through local buyers who may be processors or agents. NAFDAC, Nigeria's food regulatory agency, requires that all foreign exporters of food and agricultural products be represented by a government-registered Nigerian firm that will handle product registration and marketing.

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By March Oyinki
FAS Worldwide, a publication of The United States Department of Agriculture
December 2005

$3.5m US Gr ant for Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Centre

By March Oyinki

Crossroad Magazine

Nigerian Army will no longer face grueling hardship and long wait at the pension office after retirement. A $3.5 million U.S. grant is making it possible for retirees of the armed forces to receive adequate

training in management, computer skills, fish farming, soap making, welding, carpentry and a variety of other small scale trades that will empower them to earn a decent living as responsible members of society.

This change is the result of a collaborative program between theU.S. Department of Labor and the Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Center (NAFRC), Oshodi. During his August 2001 visit to Nigeria,

former President Bill Clinton an-nounced a U.S. government program to revitalize the Resettlement Center through the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over the last four years, the U.S. government has provided funding averaging US$1 million annually for the upgrade of training equipment, provision of hostels and the introduction of new technology and livestock farming.

The Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos organized a media tour to showcase new developments at the complex. NAFRC Camp Commandant Air Vice Marshal Emmanuel Aquasua told reporters that “The center had been neglected seriously in the past several years, and until this life-line came, the institution was in a state of serious disrepair. Infrastructure had decayed seriously and the finances to keep the institution worthy of its name were not there.”

With funding from the United States government, and technical support from Aurora Associates international (a U.S. based consultancy firm over-seeing the NAFRC project in Nigeria), the center can now possesses state of the art HIV/AIDS screening equipment. The center also has a well-equipped computer training school that is fully air-conditioned.

During the tour of the complex,  the president of Aurora Associates International Jim Statman, showed reporters one of four power generating plants provided by the U.S.  Government to help boost power supply to the center. “We are also constructing a new hostel building to provide accommodation for the trainees of the center,” said Statman.

“One very remarkable thing is that every cent spent in this center is accounted for, and in all the years we have been here, not a single missing item has been recorded. This is so because adequate protective measures are put in place to secure the equipment before they are released for use,” he added.

When one of the reporters during a question and answer session asked if there is any possibility for a Nigerian firm to take over the management of the project from Aurora Associates International, Major Abdulahi Musa, Public Relations Officer of the Center said a decision will be taken by the appropriate authories at the right time.

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LEAP: Lagos Commits More

By March Oyinki

Crossroads Magazine, Pg.14, March 2004

U.S. Consulate General, Lagos

Stakeholders in the Lagos programs of the U.S. Literacy Enhancement Assistance Program (LEAP) met last month in Ikeja and recorded major successes. First, the State Primary Education Board made a strong commitment to expand LEAP's activities within the State and to supplement U.S. government funding with Lagos state funds. Second, representatives from the newly created Bariga Local Government Authority (LGA) outlined their plans to use funds made available by the LGA to participate in the LEAP programs.

LEAP convenes a state forum annually for government officials, parents and teachers to track the U.S. literacy program's progress and address new issues in achieving the goal of quality basic education for al l. LEAP aims to improve student literacy numeracy, improve school facilities, train teachers and provide school materials to both public and religious sc h ools throughout Nigeria .

The Postcode Enigma

Post Express - Page 33
January 13, 2000

It is shameful enough living with the fact that the “giant of Africa” the largest black nation in the world does not have a postal code, a system of letters and numbers used to aid sorting of mail traffic is one of the highest in the world. As such, it is unacceptable for the Nigeria Postal Service to continue to hang over our heads, this shame as we move into the new millennium – a period of a thousand years widely believed to be a period of technological advancement and economic growth.

To corroborate my suspicion, I went to the Nigeria Postal Service to find out, and to my astonishment it was confirmed that there was no postcode, in fact, so many of the staffers of the Nigerian Postal Service know little or nothing about postal codes. Whenever government fails to meet up its obligations, it is we the ordinary citizens at the lower rung of the ladder who always pay the price.

Only a couple of days ago, Obi Ojimiwe, a political Science graduate of University of Lagos, walked into a business center to use their Internet services. He opened the yahoo.com web site and clicked at the “free web page” icon, a graphical link to the yahoo geocites’ free web page site. A form was displayed on the computer screen, which he quickly filled out, but stopped short at the entry market “Postal code”. On second thought, he typed N/P (not available) and pressed “Enter,” the button that allows the computer to accept the entries in the form. But that was not to be  last moment later, the computer displayed an error message reading, error message reading, error in postal code, but not wanting to give up easily, Obi, tried other options such as “nil”. Asterisks,’ “dash” and the rest. The error message kept reappearing as if the computer was insistent. Obi never got the free web page because he could not supply the postcode, and the fruitless effort cost him one thousand five hundred Naira (1,500.00).

We all may have had our own harrowing experience, but what it all points to is  the fact that in this age of unlimited free-flow of information, Nigeria,  once  again may occup the back stage in the new millennium. This indeed is unacceptable.

I urged the Nigerian Postal Service to tackle this matter with the urgency it deserves, and provide postal code for each State of long neglected people of Nigeria the embarrassment of past bad leadership as the new millennium approaches.

Millennium Bomb: Will Man Self-destruct?

Post Express - Page 24
February 11, 1999

"The millennium glitch fallout: oxygen machine failure kills 1,500 miners in South Africa," "Mir Space station drifts into orbit, crews in danger". Disaster in Japan, two subway trains collide, 5,000 lives lost,: "A blackout in California, death toll in hospital hit 1,000." "Plane crash in Nigeria, 320 passengers feared dead," "One million deaths usher in the year 2000."

The scenario, doomsayers believe, will be a gloom picture of calamity and stampede. It will be that of rushing ambulances and siren from police vehicles hooting at full blare and heading in opposite directions. Accident, traffic jam, pandemonium," dog bark, baby crying, explosion, and horror will fill the air. The very existence of man will be threatened by his own ingenious creation. Is the Y2K computer bug a real threat to life on earth? Will the doomsayers' prophesy about the Y2K apocalypse come true?

Robert Bemer thinks the threat of the Y2K bug is a reality, Bemer is a computer scientist, and a one time IBM whiz kid, who along with Grace Hopper wrote COBOL, the programming language behind the Y2K bug. In 1979 Bemer issued a widely publicised warning of the potential failure of the programme if the first two digits representing a calendar year are not added.

Some people stil don't believe there is any real threat. I don't have to convince any 'Thomas,' but just read the prediction of Peter de Jager, which he made in 1977. De Jager is a Canadian, a mathematics graduate fresh from college and a new employee with the Big Blue. It was he who out of curiosity, first detected the year 2000 but and stated that, the computer would not recognise the year 2000. He later predicted that, "The economy worldwide world stop ... you would not have water. You would not have power.

Both De Jager and Bemer's predictions point to the obvious, and that is, the Y2K glitch is a real threat, if the Y2K bug is a real threat, how can it be fixed, and how much time do we have left to remedy this malady.

The Y2K bug fix is as old as the bug itself. In 1957, the year Robert Bemer and his cohorts wrote  COBOL programming lsanguage, he invented a picture clause which allowed a four-digit year. But this never received IBM's approval, Effectively, for more than 40 years, computer scientists have known that there is a fix for the Y2K bug, but the knowledge of the damage the bug is going to cause was first expressed y Peter de Jager in his 1977 prediction.

Twenty-two years after de Jager apparently sounded the first warning alarm of the dangers that would follow the Y2K glitch, it is quite ignominious that governments all over the world, especially the developed economies, waited until the nick of time before suddenly getting into frenzy.

It is only recently, in 1995, to be precise, that some countries started making serious efforts to try and minimise the effect of this threat. The United States and the Netherlands are the two most Y2K compliant nations of the world. However, at the end of this millennium, the most compliant nation will still fall below the 60 per cent mark. The strategy therefore, is to focus on those sectors that are considered as “critical”. These include aviation traffic control and transportation services, telecommunications, power generation, population and pension systems, etc.

The magnitude of the danger such a malfunction would cause can best be understood when you and discover that the traffic light,  elevator, train, airplane, satellite transmitters, blood bank, national censors and pension fund databases, and so many other infrastructures around you are all controlled by computer chip. It is only then that you can understand the extent of destruction the Y2K malfunction would cause.

Take a typical situation where 1,000 airplanes from different parts of the world are in the air, and aY2K malfunction occurs, how many lives do you think would be lost. When you add up the devastation that may occur as a result of the Y2K glitch in hospitals., in  a single day all around the world. The scenario won’t be too far from a holocaust.

It is therefore imperative for government to focus on a few but critical segments of the economy, and allowing her to channel resources to these areas to  ensure compliance before the end of the century. I t is very sad to note that some third world countries are low IT consumers.

Excerpts from a World Bank report released recently by United States information Services, (USIS). Quoted Hugh Sloan, the bank’s senior information technology (IT) officer for Africa, as saying that, “…the impact could in fact be greater because these developing countries are more dependent on fewer and older computing systems, and they have many more competing national demands for scare resopurce.”

Sloan’s comments should be taken seriously because the least prepared countires will be the most hit. What I despair most, is the fact that the Y2K compliant countries that are non-compliant. This will be a negative and an extremely frightening development. because, the already fragile economy of many third world countries, especially those in Africa will be further worsened by such as boycott.

As it is now, there is no other alternative than to take immediate action. We have only up till end of March 1999. At least so says John Koskinen, an aide to President Clinton and chairman of the President’s Council on the Y2K conversion.

The only way Nigeria could take advantage of its apparently low IT consumer status, is by concentrating on those areas that have been identified as “critical.” I believe that because these parastatals are not heavily computerized, the cost of Y2K compliance will not be so much that it becomes a huge financial burden on the already scarce and over stretched resources of the government.

FG, Key to Full Internet Connectivity

Post Express - Page 18
March 20, 1997

The Internet sprouted from what was then a national computer network project called ARPANET, which was under the control of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency within the United States Department of Defence. The first countries to be connected to the Internet outside the U.S were England and Norway in 1973, and it was mostly used by universities, polytechnics and research agencies. Now, there are over a hundred countries with full Internet connectivity out of which only 11 are from the African continent (with the exclusion of Nigeria).

 Developments on the Internet in recent times had been very rapid, making it the world’s most advanced medium of communication with an installed base of over 50 million computers users linked worldwide, and an approximate annual growth rate of 2000 percent. The Internet is by far the fastest growing segment in the information technology industry. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, corroborated this fact when he said: “The surging popularity of the internet communications network is the most important single development in the computer industry since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981.” The Internet is no doubt the mother of modern communications encompassing sound picture and text. The Web earned its famous acronyms of WWW from this unique multi-media functionality.

 As we approach the new millennium, business planners and policy makers are exploiting new ways of gaining competitive business advantage, and seeking ways of improving the lives of the populace. This can be achieved largely by improved communication and information exchange and accessibility.

 The Internet has turned the world into a global village, pulling down barriers such as distance that hitherto separated countries. Information accessibility is just a mouse-click away, reducing transaction time around the globe to seconds, and at cost lower than ever. The Internet is in every way an economy in itself. Every aspect from its construction, content, communication tools, to the people that make use of it, are marketable commodities.

 In the words of Major General Sam Momah, the minister of Science and Technology, “Internet connectivity and all the benefits it would bring would help in the realization of the vision of technologically developed Nigeria by the year 2020.“ No doubt therefore that, every Nigerian is conscious of the importance of achieving full Internet connectivity. The big question is, Why Haven’t We? When other nations like Cote d’Voire, Zambia and Ghana have full Internet connectivity.

 Quite unexpectedly, the Minister of Communications Tajudeen Olanrewaju provided a startling answer to the question in a recent speech at a workshop organized by the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) last September, when he urged Internet service providers to ensure that the services they offer were not used for obscene, seditious or anti-state purposes, and went on to say that they should not expect government support or funding.

 We need to re-examine closely, the key issues involved and resolve the problems dynamically. All expressions of fear on the part of the minister that the Internet may be used for obscene, seditious or anti-state purposes should be allayed. It is now practicable for countries to censor certain classified information from the Internet. China is a good example and they have recorded significant progress in this area.

 On the issue of support and funding that should not have arisen, because it is NITEL’s responsibility to provide the required telephone lines needed to operate the Internet functionally. ISDN lines or fibre optics cables are recommended for effective worldwide web connectivity. This forms the major reason why full Internet connectivity is in a stalemate. The issues of nodes and domain name are secondary. The NIG really requires little direct support or funding from the Federal Government. What they desire as a matter of necessity is NITEL’s ISDN lines or fibre optics cables laid in Abuja, Lagos sand Port Harcourt at lease as a pilot scheme.

 There is a lot of wisdom in Bill Gate’s statement when he said< “The Internet is like a tidal wave drowning those that do not learn to swim in its waters.”

Barcoding: Nigeria Needs it

Post Express - Page 17
March 13, 1997

Provided our public utilities fail to measure up to international standards, the question of national development will continue to face us. National development and technological advancement are closely related, and this inter-twinning relationship hinges primarily on information technology (IT). The slow pace of development in the country is not unconnected with our reluctant to wholly embrace modern technology policy.

The absence of a clear cut science and technology policy thrust in national development planning and implementation is responsible for the confusion and inefficiency that has continued to plague our public utilities such as electricity and water supplies, telecommunications, and transportation.

Banking and finance, trade and commerce, oil and gas, the mining sectors have continued to receive government priority attention. Science and technology, which is the main trust of industry, have suffered total neglect. Without the entrenchment of a sound science and technology policy, growth in all other sectors will be hindered, and inefficiency, ineffectiveness and wastefulness will continue to afflict our public utilities. The low performance of our public utilities comes as no surprise.

There are many fronts to advancing technological development in the country. One of the ways is by the implementation of a national bar-coding policy. Such a policy will expedite the introduction of computer business control systems in both the public and private sectors. Benefits derivable include; easy identification of persons and products, reduction in the use of cash in business transaction, and efficient and speedy inventory control.

Bar coding comprises labels, symbologies, standards, hardware, software, systems integration etc. Barcodes are symbols consisting of a series of bars and spaces, which can be applied to tube, cartons, bottles, packages, books, cards documents, and a number of other media.

The automatic identification industry’s primary focus on capturing information both quickly and accurately, provides the fastest and most effective means of gathering data that is vital for expedient business transaction. Bar-coding applications are embraced such industry segments as post and telecommunications, banking and finance, retails, manufacturing transportation healthcare, warehousing and distribution, shipping and receiving document processing and tracking and libraries.