24 Feb
- If the policy comes to stay, milk will become the 44th item to be added by the CBN to the list of commodities whose importation will be restricted from accessing FOREX at the official rate.
- At face value, it might seem positive for growing Nigeria’s dairy production. However, does this meet the test of holistic and national economic-security thinking?
The policy may prove economically illiterate and this forex ban on milk imports could worsen the herdsmen-induced insecurity in Nigeria..
- First, the exclusion aims is to encourage dairy producers to invest in local ranches. The problem though is that Nigeria’s cattle are among the least prolific in the world. This explains the embrace of imported milk, The country failed to modernize its archaic system of grazing cattle herds over vast distances. Much of the animals’ intake are expended on excruciating commutes.
- Second, Nigeria’s high energy costs will undermine fresh milk preservation which this policy shift requires. For decades, dry (powder) milk has been the default choice for Nigerians. They are more affordable and durable given the epileptic power supply. The generations-long dependence on dry milk intensified from the late 1980s, in tandem with the erratic grid-supplied electricity. If the CBN proceeds without improvement in energy access, Nigerians will struggle to store milk safely in a country where power access is at a paltry 45%.
- Third, if the government’s aim is to help the cattle-rearing industry, as any reasonable government should, Preparing the measures more effectively is better than playing to the picture of the measures.
On the one hand, current milk producers will be likely forced to exit because of sub-optimal conditions that they are saddled with. If balanced, workable proposals for improving local milk production are not forthcoming from the government, more operational handicaps should not be grafted onto existing constraints. On the other hand, those not forced out will likely turn to capital-intensive methods. Precisely because ranching to meet the modern competitive needs of big dairy producers is a technology-intensive industrial activity.
Having been cajoled into ranching, better-groomed cattle owned by dairy producers will deliver bigger, better beef. They will likely sink small and medium-scale herders which government purports to help. Undermined in this way, herdsmen’s sense of insecurity is likely to fester. Forcing inefficient local milk production onto big dairy producers is liable to a twin deficit: that of economic under-performance and heightened security vulnerabilities. The dairy operators, their efficiency and cost-savings from imported milk undercut in the meantime, will still be unable to turn Nigeria, given its hotter climate, into a milk-exporting superpower!
In light of Nigeria’s recent signature of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), we need to proceed cautiously. Local food processing is a relatively low-hanging fruit for Nigeria in terms of developing competitive clusters to maximize AfCFTA. Rash protectionist lurches, including an imported milk ban without viable alternatives, are a quick way for the ship of Nigeria’s continental trade to start taking in water before it has even sailed.
Import controls, imposed even as local farmers fail to meet demand, have kept prices artificially high and led to smuggling from neighboring countries into Nigeria
The government can create enabling conditions with well-thought-out, comprehensive policy frames to support private-sector-led ranching. This will require a lot more in the way of studying and analyzing planned actions and likely multi-vector consequences, including on security as without this entrepreneur there can not be economic prosperity.
The New Rules for Marketing Your Brand
Consumer products marketing has experienced a profound change over the last 5 to 10 years, from a world dominated by large global brands and established TV and big-box retail models to a world that’s quickly much more complex, with a proliferation of brands, channels and marketing tools. Technology’s disrupted the industry in three ways. Firstly, it’s disrupted the way consumers engage with brands. In the UK and the US now, over 60% of consumers discover brands.
There are five areas that we encourage CMOs to look at. The first is, what are my future-back platforms that will lead growth for the next 5 to 10 years? Taking today’s profit pools and forecasting them present forward just won’t capture the level of disruption that’s impacting these industries.
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning failure.”
– OLIVER SANDERO
Secondly, given those growth platforms, what is the brand portfolio, and business portfolio that I’ll use to address them? Brand portfolio strategy is definitely rising in importance. And thirdly, when I’m clear on those platforms and those brands, how am I going to implement modern marketing to engage with the consumer? We’re seeing an extreme rise in profitable growth from the clients that we’re supporting to reset their marketing model. But that isn’t straightforward. So actually, areas four and five are enablers. Four, what’s the data and technology strategy and the roadmap to implement that? The leaders are owning their own data, refreshing it constantly, and, more importantly, using it to inform business decisions. And they’re making the technology that underpins that a priority.
This is a useful post for finding broken links within the website, what about links pointing outwards that are broken? I can use a free web service but wondered if this was possible.
Great tool! I am using a redirect plugin to send all my 404’s to my home page but I think it’s slacking sometimes.