 In November last year, the federal government flagged off campaigns for the patronage of made in Nigeria product and services in the southwest region of the country. The flag off was part of activities marking the 30th National Council of Industry, Trade and Investment on Meet and E-Making the State. At the flag off in the state, the Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment, Adini Adebayo said the campaign was part of the economic recovery and growth plan, strategy and national economic sustainability program of the federal government to reposition the country's economy. Now over the years, consumers' acceptance of made in Nigeria goods has been low. This has affected the performance of most small business sectors. Is the narrative changing? How do we make our brands top notch? That's our focus on the show for today. Welcome to Business and Sight and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Acadone. Let's start with water transportation. Travelling a Lagos ferry will now attract cash reward, while so says the Lagos State government. This comes as the government announced that its waterways are now safer. The managing director of the Lagos State ferry services, otherwise known as LACFERY, Abdulbaq Ladi Balogun, shared this information while speaking with journalists. Take a look. Lagos remains one of the busiest cities in Nigeria. It's home to over 500 active startups with a massive consumer market. Commuting within a state densely populated as Lagos has been herculean in spite of alternative means such as water transportation, all that is about to change now with a reward system in place. LACFERY users are now to receive cash rewards when they use the waterways. Anywhere you are in Lagos are your patronising Lagos State ferry services. Once you spend 5,000 naira, what of many, no matter the trips, it is one way or two ways or three ways or whatever, your 5,000 naira qualifies you for a good docking. And instantly, instantly, you will be entered into a draw that can make you win in a 500,000, 1 million, 3 million, 50 million, 100 million. The core values of the initiative is said to create responsive paths to meet the needs of Lagosians. We as government seem to be of the opinion that you need to say thank you back to people that are making it happen and that's why this reward system is being encouraged. So, if you have the Nalai Nalai, Nalai Nalai doesn't get anything, you have to be part of it before you know it's not true, not true. As a consumer, you use this token and you believe that you've used up to 5,000 naira on record and you expect to qualify for the draws and the token. So, definitely, if you think there's something wishy-washy, you can, as well as Lagos, that is transparency. In an effort to raise the standards for safety measures, the government is said to establish a command and control center to monitor activities on the waterways. The state government as well is about to commission the first of its kind in West Africa. A command and a control center. The whole idea of that command and control center is to be able to effectively monitor all of the activities going on on the waterways in terms of safety, in terms of security, and of course gather data for the government to be able to make informed decisions. And this would also help us be able to respond to emergencies even much quicker. Yes, we know there were unfortunate incidents in the recent time, but prior to those two incidents, which were back to back for nine months, we didn't have any incidents on our water, which is the first of its kind. All eyes, especially travelers and waters, are looking forward to the impact of the project. Love Ikuku Oyeduku. Plus, TV news. Now, that's some cherry-neesful negotiations. Improving product quality is integral to market entry and share. Failure to adhere to international standards for product quality will continue to limit the market acceptability of Nigerian products. As it poses the risk of rejection and non-acceptance of the product here at home and abroad, Nigerians need to embrace locally made products that position the country as one of the best quality producers globally and grow the economy. Antela Eko says the co-founder, the confident black woman and CEO, black, blonde, and brunettes. She leads an up-to-date certified training and research center for hair and wig manufacturing, production, and sales. Many thanks for joining us on the show, Antela. Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here. It is indeed our pleasure. So let's talk about Made in Nigeria brands. I know you're actually having one done right now. Oh, yes. But how would you rate our products so far? Well, I would say Made in Nigeria products is getting a whole lot better from where it used to be. And I would attribute that mostly to the rise of the social media and also the improvement of logistics. So because a lot of people are now able to move their products from one end of Nigeria or from one end of the country to anywhere, it has created a bigger opportunity for Nigerian products to reach more people. Okay. So the improvement we've seen so far is as a result of the social media and, of course, and transport logistics, really. But speaking seriously right now, before now, acceptability has been a bit low. Most people would say when they hear that the goods are made from Aba or somewhere in Lagos or Nei, we also, like, are you sure those products will be durable or even home-grown solutions providers, they'd rather want to get something from maybe South Africa or from the Western countries. How has acceptability been so far? Yes, well, you're right in that regard because, of course, everyone wants, a lot of people want to keep up with the juniors. So it sounds better to say I received my product from Italy. But it's funny to know that some of these products we buy abroad are actually made here and sold abroad. And then Nigerians and other people go there to buy it and bring it back in. Why are we still at that time? Because the local manufacturers haven't learned so much on how to brand their product so that it could have world-class acceptance. So what happens is that they produce and sell to, you know, bigger brands who now rebrand and repackage those products and sell it soon. Can't we have those bigger brands here in the country? Oh, yes, we can. We can have them. Oh, don't we even have them? We should. We have some of them, but also we would need the technical expertise to train our local people, like in our bar, for instance. A lot of products are made every day. You'll be shocked at the thousands of clothes, bags, outfits, fashion items, even products that are being turned out from those factories. But because the lack that branding, that finishing, that, you know, internationally acceptable look of products, it doesn't really scale so much. It doesn't go that far. So why should they lack all of that? Is it a thing that is so hard to come by or so far-fetched, or what exactly? Okay, so it's majorly because of the attitude of these people. Most of them are just interested in producing products that will just fly off the shelf. They are not interested in taking time to do that due diligence to say, okay, I want my specifications to be exactly like this. I want it to look like this. I want it to be finished in a particular way. So since that is not an area of interest, they just do what they think is right and since people are already buying it anyway, they go with it. So it has to do with the thinking of the people playing in that space. The minute there is an urge, the minute there is a zeal to want to produce internationally acclaimed and internationally recognized products that can sell anywhere in the world, you'll find out that the products will become better. So that brings us to the issue of standardization, which you have mentioned in person. Because you are involved in fashion styles, specifically hair and braided wigs. I know there are standards. For instance, if you want maybe a particular length or maybe color and all that, if you go abroad or maybe outside the country, you can get those specifications and standardization easily. But what do we really have here and how do we begin to move towards internationally accepted standards? Okay, well, I would say in that regard, the standards organization of Nigeria has been doing a lot. There is a standard for almost any kind of product right now in Nigeria. For even our industry, the hair and wig, synthetic hair and human hair wig making, we have a standard. And it's a very good standard that when you go through the process, you can easily get your certification if you meet that standard. So in that regard, that has already been done. Now the willingness of the players in that space and other spaces to say, okay, since I want an international standard, let me go through the process of making my products meet up to that expectation. And gradually people are beginning to move to that direction. For instance, if your product has an SON stamp on it, you are qualified to be part of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria. You are qualified to ship products for free to certain countries without, I mean, duties and all that usually charged on shipping. Those are some of the things that the government has done to entice and to encourage small businesses to look at producing their products in such a way that wherever it lands in the world you can pick it up and say, oh yes, this is a good product. Let's talk about your particular sector, which is the hair and wig manufacturing. A whole lot is really happening in that sector. The last time we talked you talked about how Nigerians can actually do these things better than from those Asian countries. How is the industry right now and are we really catching up with the recent tide? Yes, the industry is actually growing and the Nigerian as a country has done quite well in the braided wig industry. For your wig to look for your wig to be acceptable I mean, if you're walking on the street and someone stops you and says, hey, I love your wig I bet you got it from Nigeria and you say, oh yes, I got it from Nigeria. Nigeria speaks quality when it comes to braided wigs. Yes, anywhere you go if it looks good, always got to be from Nigeria. That's what you hear. It's a beautiful thing. But what we also want to be able to do is to also insist on that same standard and quality here in Nigeria because we have millions of people who actually need this product here but because of you know, the lack of standardisation so to speak we are not able to give that much quality back home. So we want a situation whereby everyone who is in this industry knows that this is how this should be. If we're making a twist let it be a twist. If it's a braid, let it be a braid such that when everybody starts to do it anywhere you find yourself as long as you're in Nigeria you already know that this is how it should look. It's just like tie and dye. You have to follow the process of it. You can't be creative. You have to tie it. You have to dye it. You have to let it oxidise. You have to let it go through that process. Yes, so that it can come out looking exactly like what it should be. Right now in terms of standardisation and that's why at our training centre we teach that what we teach is this is how it should be and a lot of them are like it looks like I'm learning this work all over again. We have people that have been practicing for 15 years, 20 years and like they feel like they are going back in time to learn it all over again because of the insistence on the quality. So let's stay with your industry for a bit. Last year specifically that I covered some events that you brought ladies together for some competition. Yes, 420 minutes head challenge. How is that really going? Yes, that went very well and it's going very well so far. We had the winners top three. We invested in training them and then training some of their workers in their various businesses and the patronage they have received so far has been very very good. The clientele they are able to interact with they have better clients right now because they are able to say hey this is what you need to do this is what it should look like. There's this confidence they now have being proud that I'm in the hair industry I'm a stylist, I'm a professional beautician and all that so that has given their business a boost and I'm happy to say that at least all of them the top three that are taking part and even the other ones are now shipping abroad. That's what we should be even talking about so when we grow these products and services so we should make them have an international outlook where Nigeria would actually be a hub that's what we want to see happening in the country but still on that capacity building that was a one-off that you had and a lot of people benefited. What's the essence or what's the place of capacity building in maybe not just your industry but for local manufacturers local service providers. Don't you think that should be emphasised upon? Oh yes it should be emphasised upon. It's really really important because COVID-19 and even the fluctuations and the forest rates has taught us a lot. I mean there were lots of things like raw materials that needed to come in but because of COVID a lot of us particularly in our industry we didn't have access to raw materials. We had to be creative we had to find a way to start making some of these things we buy abroad here in Nigeria and that in its own has grown a separate market in that industry so it's an area where everybody all the local manufacturers need to have as much skill as possible because we do not even have the capacity to produce for the usage of our country's population not to talk about producing for the whole world but the more trained the more technical expertise that exists in the hands of these small businesses and the local producers the better our chances at scaling and selling to the whole world. So it's extremely important it's very needed. In passing you mentioned the forex how people are complaining about the nation's forex regime and how it has impacted negatively most of the times on their service and even their product so what goes through what impact of these forex regime has been on your own industry? Well, we are smiling in our industry because we sell abroad and what I would encourage to happen will be more access to be created there's an engine we are working on that should be able to house as many braiders and small businesses in the industry that would give them the capacity to produce here and also sell abroad there are lots of regulations standardization, there's a lot in that process that a lot of my people don't want to go through that stress they don't want to. Most of them are not able to because they don't have the time and they don't have the technical expertise to successfully get to that level which is where we want to come in and also encourage the government to play as well. But in terms of the raw materials yes, it's been difficult because most of our raw materials come from China Vietnam in terms of the base material for the braiding here it's beautiful we have that in the world Yes, they are all sourced locally in terms of what we are making these hairs on and the weeks, the fullest weeks the other less materials are mostly sourced from abroad so that has been a bit, it has raised the price because the more the rates go up the more expensive it gets for us but thankfully lots of they are now alternative we now have some people now have the scale of making these less materials in Nigeria so we are not so pressed for it. There's an entire value chain and that's COVID pushed that out we were no longer we knew we couldn't import anymore we had to find ways to get those things done and a lot of people have grown the scale of it's called ventilating and that has now made a different industry and has created its own employment in that value chain that can also serve the braided week industry. Alright, you're still watching Business Insight and Plus TV Africa Angela is still here with us but we'll take a quick break and return what's more, don't go away, stay with us. Welcome back, it's still Business Insight and Plus TV Africa and Angela, you can see her still with us in the house, thanks for staying with us Angela, alright find a whole lot you have said concerning made in Nigeria small scale businesses and startups but the challenge I see is that of packaging and marketing maybe that's why the ones that produced abroad enjoy more patronage because of what the eyes can see what do you think we can do what's the way for that, do we begin to change that narrative? Well the first will be enlightenment, trying to enlighten our people that when something looks good it's easier to be petrified, it's easier to be bought so that is also part of what our training entails we teach them packaging, we teach them branding we teach them finishing so that is very very important and at the end of the day when they see these things they are like some scales fell off their eyes they are like oh I never knew my product would look this good I didn't know this was what I produced so because of the packaging involved so we have to do a lot of enlightenment to enrich the organizations government organizations are also pushing the standard organizations of Nigeria, they have specifications on how the finished product should look like so that awareness is important the good thing is that every packaging material you need can actually be sourced here every packaging materials are sourced here, in fact we have gotten to the point where we are now giving packaging materials to companies abroad they found out that it's better to do it in Nigeria, it's cheaper and it's faster and everything so we are becoming cheaper than in China so that's a plus so if people are enlightening that this is how a finished product should look like it's to enjoy more patronage it creates that experience like oh I have something beautiful so I think enlightenment is very key the more people know about it the more they will change and the better products will come out. On the final notes now Angela, in terms of government intervention, what specific areas would you want to see changes? Well, for government intervention there's a lot the government can do one of the things they can do is bringing in the technical expertise now while we are promoting Nigeria products we know that there is actually no made by Nigerians or owned by Nigerian products. The biggest manufacturing products in Nigeria right now are owned by foreigners so if we say we want made in Nigeria products we actually don't have they are not owned by Nigerians they may be partly made by Nigerians but they are not owned by Nigerians and it's not complete to get the technical expertise to train Nigerians to know how to do these things in that standard that would help and then also it's also good for the government to take part in partnerships like if for instance the government has a specific partnership with India to say okay give us your hair so that when we have this hair in bulk in Nigeria we're going to save shipping costs we're going to save a lot of things we just go there and buy and produce so partnership with these countries like India, Taiwan, China that have the technical expertise and the raw materials will go a long way in making our industry very very appealing and we just hope we begin to see all those changes that we have talked about thank you so much Angela for your time thank you Angela Eyekose is the co-founder and black woman and CEO of Black Blanche she joins us to talk about how we can actually move and scale up local production here in Nigeria that's the size of the show for this week I am Justin Akadouni many thanks for watching, bye for now