You make sound reasoning. Problems we face if you take Nigeria for example is that the ‘environment’ is not in place for a viable manufacturing industry. You do not expect a a ‘privately owned’ business to come and develop our power sector or transportation network to facilitate their business. there is the business of manufacturing a product, and there is the business marketing, selling, and delivery of the products (logistics) to the customer. All these add to the final cost of the product.
We have a lot of serious inward looking to progress in this country and in all of Africa. We need the political and business will to be working hand in hand with each other to determine how we progress. India is the perfect example. The took the decision s a country that investing in IT would transform their economy. They changed their educational system, and started out setting up call centres for all sizes of foreign businesses. Now they have 3 companies in the top 10 IT consultancy firms, wit also the top 3 firms having technology labs setup in India.
We are not too far off in 9ja if the right policy decisions are made. The skills of untrained artisans in places like Alana, Shoe makers at ABA, Generator technicians at Onitsha, gives me hope. If a policy is formulated around developing this country into an electronics/electrical manufacturing hub, we have the natural talent in this country to progress. What would be next is to fund the universities or technical institutions to formal develop training courses . With this combination we can then tap into foreign expertise where established firms seeking growth through new innovation will be seeking to tap into such a new market. South Korea & Taiwan did this and see where they are today. The world is buying their products which ranges from small electronic devices to cars.
Our greatest problem is the POVERTY OF LEADERS