Until recently, Nigeria and indeed, Africa had no clear and coordinated approach to standardisation of products. This made the continent a dumping ground for substandard products. But the trend begun to change two years ago when the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) Director-General Dr Joseph Odumodu was elected African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO) president. Under his watch, over 800 standards have so far been harmonised. There are plans to harmonise a total of 1,500 standards in the next one year before he leaves office. In this interview with Assistant Editor Chikodi Okereocha, Odumodu says ARSO is using standardisation to break down trade barriers and build a more robust economy for Africa. He spoke on this and other issues. Excerpts.
What stage are you are in terms of harmonisation of standards across the region, and enhancement of intra-African trade.
In 1991 there was what they call the ‘Abuja Treaty’. And it was in that treaty that African countries talked about the creation of African economic community. In that treaty also, they identified the importance of quality infrastructure in the development of the African continent. There were also other issues that they highlighted issues of the fact that we are not talking to each other enough. Africa was not trading with each other. Africa was trading with other economic communities. What was also identified as a major cause of it was the fact that we were already used to the quality of products that were coming from other continents, but apparently we did not trust each other about the quality of products we were circulating amongst ourselves. ARSO was actually formed about 50 years ago by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). But I must say that not much was done after the formation of ARSO in terms of using it as a vehicle for creating economic development for Africa because just like Nigeria, nobody talks about how we can use standards to create or to develop our economies. Today, at least in the last four to five years, everybody is talking about quality infrastructure and the fact that even though we have lived with measurements, standardisation and all that, defining them in the context of how they can help to facilitate trade was not there; I don’t think we’ve created that linkage. Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) was there developing standards; sometimes they go to the industries and harass people for not complying with the standards and all that. Today, we now know that if I want to trade with Ghana or South Africa, we need to speak the same language. I gave an analogy at a conference that a standard is like our mothers who know how to cook and somehow if they want to cook Egusi soup, they didn’t need to read from any standard book, but they knew how to get the right measures of salt, pepper and everything and it comes out wonderful in taste. It’s also the way that standard is. You cook for yourself; maybe you don’t need a standard or you put the standard in your head. But if you have to cook for somebody else, you begin to look at how we can cook for everybody so that we all can accept the same taste. And then think about cooking for another country and that’s where the harmonisation of standards comes in. It is that harmonisation that creates a basis for you and I to do business. So, harmonisation has started happening, but we also have limited ourselves to where we have what we call comparative and competitive advantage.
What are the areas?
In Africa, we are reputed for exporting agricultural products to other parts of the world, and that has also defined where we have developed competences. So, if you look at cocoa, cotton, etc those are the areas where you can see African countries have done business in and that’s also what we have tried to do to begin first of all to deal with each other because we have cocoa in Nigeria, we have cocoa in Ghana, but because of agricultural and geographic differences the cocoa in Nigeria may have certain advantages over the cocoa in Ghana or vis-versa. I will give you an example. Cocoa has a tendency to take what they call heavy metals from around it like lead and mercury. So, in defining a standard for cocoa you must define the limits for some of those heavy metals that have impacts on health. So, today, in Africa we have actually harmonised like maize, garri; there are lots of products in the agricultural area that we have harmonised. We’ve also defined in the area of engineering, in the area of chemicals. Those areas, as I said where we have the ability to develop products. There we have about 800 standards that are already harmonised. However, in some areas, you know what we are doing is we do within Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), we do within East Africa, we do within the Southern region; we also do within the Northern African union (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and others). There’s a lot of work that has been done within ECOWAS now; there is a lot of work done within East Africa. In fact, the East Africans have already started harmonising with the Southern Africans through their Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA). So, they have already done a lot of work. But even at the auspices of ARSO what we’ve done is to select some of them and harmonise. Somehow I tell people that Africa seems to be blessed with strong countries within each of those groups such as Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Those are the countries that are leading the process of harmonisation. Have we achieved where we should be? No we haven’t. Have we started redefining intra-African trade from 10 per cent to 25 per cent? We haven’t reached there, but I think we’ve created enough bases for those businesses to happen. But we also realised that apart from quality infrastructure there are also other forms of infrastructure that are required. For example, we want to create some geographic linkages. If you want to travel to Cameroon it may actually be easier for you to go to London and come back to Cameroon. Because it is how the goods will move that also people will be able to move. But what is good is that the Heads of States of African Union defined the Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) to be promulgated by 2017. Some people say it’s too early. We don’t think it’s too early because we are working towards it; we believe that we can cross the bridge when we get there. So, we are creating an opportunity for the Heads of States to make the decisions. In fact, I am headed to South Africa and at that meeting we are all standardisation, metrology, accreditation; all the groups in Africa I am meeting because we need to summit the paper to the AU Heads of States meeting and it is all in furtherance to the realisation of the 2017 CFTA. You know you cannot force everybody to do it; it’s a kind of moral suasion. If we do this it will be beneficial to us as Africa. If we do this we can industrialise Africa; Africa has a huge population and our population is growing. In fact, when I look at Africa and I look at Nigeria I say Nigeria is just a microcosm of all the African challenges because we are saddled with invasion of sub-standard products. We are saddled with poverty, disease and all that. But I think what we can do is using standardisation to break down trade barriers and then to ensure that we can build a more robust economy for Africa. If we do that and keep away bad products, because what we are doing now is how can we support our weaker African brothers. Some of them don’t even have standards bodies. Those of us who are developed in standards give standards to them and then we do what we call bi-lateral agreement or mutual recognition agreement so that we can trade seamlessly in such a way that we can support them, we can learn from each other about what is done successfully and then we can build a better Africa.
To achieve this there will be need for capacity development across various countries. How can you make this happen because it is one thing to have the standards and another thing to implement the standards?
When we do ECOWAS harmonisation, it is led by Nigeria, because some of the countries are not endowed with what we have so, we are the one who lead the process. Today, West Africa has what we call Quality Policy for West Africa. It was championed by Nigeria. So, we are actually providing technical support to smaller countries. I know, for example, we’ve done something for Cameroon. We’ve trained some other countries like Liberia where they set up their standard bodies and we helped as Nigeria to train them so that they can all come to the same level. The reason why we are also doing that is not because we know too much, but because apart from being our brother’s keeper, we need to build everybody to come to the same level. If we don’t come to the same level how can we trade? We can’t speak the same language and all that. So, those are some of the things that are being currently done. Nigeria and Kenya, for example, have actually done a lot in capacity building. And at the last meeting too, we were mandated by ARSO to provide capacity for lesser endowed African countries for free because at the end of the day, like I said, we are doing it for Africa and Africa’s growth.
It seems West Africa is being left behind in the implementation of the CFTA agenda. How do you think you can use your office as ARSO President to drive the agenda?
I don’t know if it’s an accident, but yes, ECOWAS appears to be at the tail end of the progress that we have made so far. But I must say that we have made so much progress in the last two years. But our lack of appreciable progress is also as a result of our historical antecedents. We had two ECOWAS basically, and there is this tendency of us not speaking enough with each other. So, we have the French-speaking and English-speaking and even among the English-speaking we don’t even speak with one voice. So, there are a few challenges, but what we have also done is to provide the leadership that we can use to drive it because today I am president and I don’t want a situation where we will be the regional economic group that will keep Africa behind. So, like I said we have made so much progress in the last two years, but East and Central Africa are so far ahead already. There are also reasons why they are far ahead because there is geographical, language and there is a lot of traffic among them already. And most of the multilateral agencies somehow, whether by accident, reside within those two communities. For example, we have United Nations Economic Community for Africa. But like I said we are making better efforts. Let me look at Nigeria. When we started in 2011, Nigeria did not have metrology, no accreditation, but today Nigeria is showing strongly. We have actually within two or three years built enough grounds to level out with countries like South Africa and Kenya. In the next two years, I can assure you, we will be clearly at par with all of them. That parity is also what will help to accelerate the process of integration in Africa.
A lot of products have been harmonised. Is there any common product within this region that has refused to be harmonised?
I am not actually tracking what is not being harmonised. Let me give you an example. Garri has been harmonised in Africa and if you see garri in South Africa or in Nigeria or anywhere it is the same garri, it has the same specifications anywhere. You know when we are harmonising at the level of the international community that because of technological advances you will now begin to see products that are being dropped, but in Africa we have not attained that level. We really need to put efforts to harmonise before we begin to dump products.
How many more products do you hope to harmonise within the next one year?
I don’t have the figure off hand, but in the next one year, because I have just one year to go, we will make sure that we would have done up to 1, 500 in total. But like I said harmonisation is also driven by the market need; we don’t want to harmonise for the fun of it, we want to harmonise what we can trade on with each other. And what I’ve also found is, for example, in Cameroon they have a factory that does intermediates for cocoa powder and all that. So we have cocoa in Nigeria, crude, and we can harmonise with them so that we can also feed into that industry that they have there. But one good thing about harmonisation is that you can use what you have done partly to continue to do some work elsewhere and in a very seamless way as if you are running one factory.
ARSO came out strongly during the meeting against the issue of dumping in the region. How does ARSO intend to go about checking dumping?
In our meetings we agreed on the fact that Africa seems to have one big enemy, because if you look at Africa in the context of industrialisation it does appear that Arica stepped back in the last 10 or 15 years and if you investigate that you find out that the growth of certain Asian economies also resulted in decline of industrialisation in Africa. That’s not a challenge. I think what is a challenge is that because of the weak regulatory framework in Africa it is easy to bring those products; maybe that’s what you are also referring to as dumping. There is nothing wrong with bringing products into economies once they attract the right price and there is quality, but the point is when you are sending sub-standard products into African economies. It’s not fair; it’s actually inhuman as far as I am concerned. So, what we have done also is to work with our colleagues first to share our best practices. But one thing I found that shocked me was that every country we went to they were going through the same challenges as Nigeria. So, I think they must have found out that maybe there were certain initiative that we introduced such as issues of registering the products, issues of consumer education; because the reason why these products come into Africa is because African consumers are very ignorant. So, we are sharing best practices; we are sharing experiences, and we are also helping our weaker colleagues. Remember if Africa forms a continental free trade area the weakest point will be the weakest countries that those products can come into and then they can get to the rest of Africa so, everybody must be at the same level and that’s what we have committed ourselves to.
You visited some Asian countries identified as culprits in the business of bringing in substandard products. What motivated you to do this?
We are engaging those people at another level. We are engaging them now at the level of the African Union. Like I said I am going tonight for a meeting and those are the initiatives that we are also canvassing. The point is that if Nigeria fights with a big economy Nigeria may not be too successful, but if Africa fights there is going to be somebody listening and that is the basis for our strategy now that let’s fight as Africa because we have the critical mass. And if Africa for example says if you don’t do this we will ban products coming from you they will listen because I am sure Africa constitutes maybe over 50 per cent of their manufacturing output.
Can you pick out some segments of the economy that are beginning to feel the trickle down effects or benefits of these actions?
I think one that sticks out is the cable manufacturing area. We’ve done a lot of interventions within the cables and I am happy that the cable manufacturers are now giving testimonies that things are getting better for them. I must also say that if you go to some of them like Coleman Wire and Cables, they’ve actually made huge investments in recent times. There is also Cutis Cables in Nnewi, Anambra State. So, there are actually exciting testimonials. We also can talk about the galvanised metal products, the one we call zinc. When we did some review of standards we actually found out that almost 30, 000 employment positions were filled within the industry and now those people are able to export their products outside of Nigeria. The most astonishing for me though is in the re-enforcement bars. If you go and ask the big construction companies especially the multinational ones in Nigeria, way back in 2011 they bought everything, they imported everything from abroad. Of course, it cost them more because you have to put money down to be able to import products like bars that they use for their buildings. Today, most of them are importing less than 20 per cent of their requirements. Why? Because they found the local re-enforcement bars are now competing at the same level with the internal products that they are buying. For example, for the re-enforcement bars, we told them that we needed to create some traceability. So, today if any building comes down or you go to the market I can tell you who made what. So, you cannot hide in the crowd. Even if a building comes down, during the investigation we are able to tell where and who made what because there are identity marks. When I came I found out that most of them do not have quality assurance systems; we insisted that they must have, they must buy equipment and those equipment must be calibrated and people who must work there must also be people who are well trained. And these are also showing in the kind of the outcome of the quality of the products. I think what is critical on this job is having the passion and a single-minded approach to pursuing it. I think what we have seen in Africa is that if you look away people turn round and want to make profits because the consumers are largely ignorant. And then don’t lose concentration; if you lose concentration they will go back to their old ways.
In the area of SONCAP is there any window of opportunity or concession to manufacturers to fast track their import process?
The SONCAP is a scheme to keep away products that do not meet the standards especially when they are coming from outside. What we have done is to single out manufacturing, maybe because of my experience in manufacturing also, that these people need their materials when they need them. And two, they are already challenged with a lot of infrastructure issues, even delays at the ports. So, what we’ve done also is to facilitate and to make sure that there is a small window that we have created for manufacturers to obtain permits to bring in those products without having to pay an arm and a leg as against those who are importing finished goods and I think the manufacturing industry is better for it.
How far has SON gone in reducing the preponderance of sub-standard products? Also the destruction of seized substandard products amount to economic waste, you indicated the possibility of recycling. Is that arrangement still on course?
Yes, but you know we are not government, but what we have done is to encourage businessmen to invest in recycling plants. For example, when you seize tyres, tyres contain some metals. The rubber can be used by other heavy industries for providing energy basically and then the other part goes to the steel industry as raw material. But generally, the level of sub-standard products in Nigeria has reduced in the last three years. It may have been constant in the last two years; I mean whatever level it is has remained constant and the reason is obvious. I said to somebody yesterday government in its wisdom removed SON from being at the ports and that singular action now hampered the drive for reducing substandard products in Nigeria because today we are not at the ports so, we do not even know what is coming into Nigeria. As an organisation we devised another alternative. We went to the markets. The markets are risky, they are more difficult and we are also limited. There are 1, 400 people in SON. There are over 1, 400 markets in Nigeria so, I can’t even send one staff per market and I don’t know how effective one person will be in a market. So, it does appear that we have slowed down in the drive to reduce those products in Nigeria, but what we have done now is also to segment. Today, for example, our statistics show that electrical/electronic products constitute over half of the substandard products. So, what we’ve done now is that within one month we are launching a campaign on what we call ‘Operation Flush’ and we are going to focus on electrical/electronic products and you will hear because if I am running a campaign or if I am doing something people will hear because I will do it in a way that if people don’t complain then you are not effective. People are going to complain even to the president that this man is disrupting our business, but actually we must disrupt businesses of people who do not want to do the right thing. So, we are going to hit them, we will actually hit at all levels; we will go to the markets, we are reviewing the SONCAP certification for those products. But we are also going to be talking to the consumers. So, it’s going to be a three-pronged approach, that’s why we call it operation flush. The consumers must also be tutored on what to look out for when they want to buy electrical or electronic products. The more people stay away from those products the less they will bring them in. And I can tell you watch out before the end of the year you will see a new lease of life for industries because there is an inverse relationship between reduction of substandard products and the health of the manufacturing industry.