Three surprises from our two-week visit to Nigeria, By Yusuf Bangura

I’ve been reflecting on three points since we returned from a two-week journey in Nigeria three weeks in the past. Earlier than that go to, I had not been to Nigeria for 14 years. My final go to was in 2010, despite the fact that I lived there for eight full years between 1980 and 1988 and spent a month there with my household on the finish of 1999 and early 2000.

Regardless of my lengthy absence, I attempted to maintain abreast of developments within the nation, due to the provision of two main tv channels (Come up Information and Channels) on YouTube, and in style newspapers like Premium Instances, Each day Belief and This Day, which can be found on-line — other than my quite a few interactions with mates and former college students on-line via WhatsApp and e-mail, and studying good books and articles on the nation.

However the lengthy absence threw up three massive surprises, which those that expertise them often might take without any consideration. I can’t resist sharing with you what we noticed.

We had been struck by the simple availability of nicely processed and packaged meals with native flavours; the seemingly ubiquitous use of debit playing cards and Level Of Sale (POS) machines for bizarre transactions; and the extraordinary means that afrobeats has crowded out Western music in public areas.

Nigerians, it appeared to us, are being ineluctably related or built-in by highly effective financial and social forces regardless of the dysfunction that many observe or complain about on the central state degree.

The Native Meals Processing Trade is Thriving

We had been amazed to see that many native meals that had been solely obtainable in casual markets and in unprocessed or unpackaged kind once we lived within the nation and visited in 2000 and 2010, can now be purchased, nicely processed and packaged, in supermarkets, small retailers and stalls.

These meals vary from drinks (constituted of soya, tiger nuts, bananas, pineapples, guava, ginger, mangoes, lemons, oranges, watermelon, and different fruits and millet) to processed grains and tuber (akin to for amala, dry ginger pap, beans, gari, fufu, plantain flour, and poundo or pounded yam, masa, floor rice or tuwo shinkafa, kunun-zaki and kunun tsamiya) and ready-to-eat meals (like on the spot combine moi moi, ogbono soup, egusi soup, pepper soup, and Nigerian jolof rice).

As well as, there’s a flourishing biscuit enterprise, with a wide range of manufacturers, 50 per cent of that are believed to be dominated by native producers. Sweet manufacturing, utilizing native flavours, can also be thriving. One can now purchase tamarind, coconut, mango, melon, orange and pineapple sweets in shiny packages. The listing of domestically manufactured meals is infinite.

It has been estimated that the meals and beverage business, which is valued at about $20 billion, accounts for 22.5 per cent of the manufacturing sector’s worth, 4.6 per cent of the nation’s GDP, and a 3rd of client expenditure. The Meals and Agriculture Organisation estimates that about 50 per cent of producing jobs are in meals processing.

It was clear to us that Nigeria is making necessary strides in upgrading and increasing its meals business, including actual worth to its financial system, and making intensive use of its considerable pure merchandise.

The daughters of an in depth couple household handled us to delightfully tasty and spicy home-made yam balls once we visited them in Abuja. After we lived in Nigeria, yams had been solely pounded, boiled or fried. The yam balls had been a beautiful innovation to us, which, we suspect, is more likely to be packaged for mass consumption — if some sensible entrepreneur has not already performed it.

We needed to purchase a good quantity of smoked shrimps in Lagos to convey to Switzerland, because the shrimps obtainable in Asian shops in our small city of Nyon are sun-dried. My spouse, Kadie, advised the driving force to counsel an off-the-cuff market the place we may purchase the smoked shrimps. I dreaded the stress of searching for a parking space in Lagos’s busy market streets and interjected that from what we had noticed in meals processing, it’s extremely possible that smoked shrimps could be obtainable within the grocery store very near our lodge. We checked the grocery store and located that a complete constructing, referred to as Village Market, was reserved for domestically processed meals. Smoked shrimps had been there and nicely packaged.

The one disadvantage we observed within the new meals habits is the sluggish demise of genuine pounded yam. Poundo, which is meant to be an alternative choice to pounded yam, doesn’t precisely style like pounded yam. Poundo is constituted of yam flour relatively than from boiled yam. We ate poundo at our hosts’ home in Abuja, on the lunch organised after the symposium of our host’s seventieth birthday on the Yar’Adua Convention Centre, and on the Radisson lodge in Lagos. We needed to eat the actual or genuine stuff earlier than we left Nigeria. We did that in Lagos at a chic Yoruba restaurant, Ile Iyan, not from removed from the Radisson lodge.

What all of this means is that Nigeria’s meals processing sector cries out for critical analysis. Professors within the social science colleges within the universities ought to encourage their doctoral college students to enterprise into this promising area of examine. There may be clearly a have to advance the pioneering work that Bjorn Beckman and Gunilla Andrae did within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties on bread, which produced The Wheat Lure, and cotton, which resulted in Union Energy within the Nigerian Textile Trade. This time the main focus must be on the good transformation that’s happening within the meals processing sector.

All profitable industrial states, together with current ones, such because the East Asian nations and India, handed via the necessary stage of meals processing. All of them moved from the sale of unprocessed to processed meals as their city populations discovered home preparation of unprocessed meals time-consuming. In addition they primarily consumed meals that had been domestically produced as a substitute of consuming imported meals.

The second or self-reliant a part of the transformation of the meals processing sector is but to be realised in Nigeria. Nonetheless, experiences counsel that native producers are steadily edging out importers. The choice of Nigerians for native meals flavours appears to be taking part in a giant half on this. The dramatic, greater than three-fold devaluation of the naira within the final yr and half can also be more likely to favour native producers, particularly these whose inputs are much less uncovered to international sources or suppliers. Nonetheless, the incomes of shoppers, which have been terribly hit by the devalued naira and inflation, have to develop for the continued transformation to be sustainable.

Is Nigeria Turning into a Cashless Economic system?

One of many superb issues we noticed in our journey is how quickly massive elements of the Nigerian financial system are being rendered cashless. We discovered it very tough to vary {dollars} into naira. A lot of the transactions we needed to make required possession of Nigerian debit playing cards.

After we arrived in Abuja from Addis, we modified $200 at a charge of $1 to N1,650. We thought it will be simple to vary {dollars} on the town if we exhausted the cash we had modified. Nonetheless, we had been poorly knowledgeable in regards to the mode of financial transactions within the nation. We later realised that it was very tough to have entry to naira. This, we understood, was as a result of two developments.

The primary is the lengthy and protracted lag of the money crunch that occurred simply earlier than the 2023 common elections when the Central Financial institution of Nigeria (CBN) modified the foreign money and residents discovered it tough to vary their previous notes to the brand new notes. And the second is what appears like a profitable citizen response to the CBN coverage. Many Nigerians made a large swap by buying debit playing cards with a view to keep away from the issues of liquidity or money availability in banks.

This swap to debit playing cards has inspired an intensive progress of Level of Gross sales (POS) transactions throughout massive segments of the financial system. Many individuals discover it simple to pay for items and companies by merely swiping their debit playing cards on the POS machines. It has been reported that the POS machines utilized in Nigeria reached 3.04 million in July 2024, representing a 32 per cent year-on-year improve over the identical interval final yr. From our remark, POS machine funds in Nigeria are simply as seamless as in Europe.

This transformation has been extraordinary, particularly because it was solely in the previous couple of years that the POS system grew to become universalised in Western economies. The EMV chip card expertise that launched the hand held funds machine was commercialised solely in 2015, and the Toast Go absolutely built-in handheld POS system that enables for orders to be taken and funds made wherever in a restaurant got here into the market in 2018.

The POS system can also be nicely entrenched in Namibia, Botswana and Cape City as we found throughout our holidays in these three locations in October and November final yr. However there’s one massive distinction: western debit playing cards are nearly universally accepted within the Southern African nations; Nigeria’s POS ecosystem alternatively is wholly Nigerian — in different phrases, the POS machines solely work with Nigerian debit playing cards.

As non-residents, we encountered each a naira money crunch and issues utilizing our Western debit playing cards. We needed to discover methods to beat the issues.

On the final day of our keep in Abuja, we needed to vary some {dollars} into naira on the airport. However the casual foreign money dealer complained about naira shortage and gave us a horrible charge ($1 to Le1,520). We refused to make the transaction, considering that we’d get a greater deal in Lagos. However it was worse in Lagos once we received there. The foreign money merchants on the native airport space advised us they’d solely settle for a debit card transaction as they didn’t have any naira. We gave them the {dollars} however had to make use of our driver’s debit card to retailer the naira. Their charge was the identical as the speed we rejected in Abuja.

We confronted related issues once I needed to purchase African kaftan fits in Abuja and pay for our meals on the Ile Iyan restaurant in Lagos. My UBS Mastercard was ineffective on each events. The kaftan dealer needed to be paid in money or via a Nigerian debit card. He later accepted cost in money {dollars}, however advised me he was wanting naira and would give me the change solely via a POS system. Our host solved the issue by receiving the change in his naira debit card.

There was a misunderstanding on the Ile Iyan restaurant in Lagos. Earlier than we sat down for the dinner, I requested one of many waiters whether or not the restaurant accepted Credit cards and he answered within the affirmative. It turned out that he was referring to Nigeria’s personal model of Mastercard. I needed to pay in money Euros, which, thankfully, he accepted.

Nigeria’s big market and weak publicity to international vacationers means it may possibly create and thrive by itself Nigeria debit cards-only POS system. It is a main growth in advancing the expansion of its nationwide market. Most of those that transact companies within the nation are Nigerian debit card holders. Western debit playing cards are solely accepted in resorts and huge companies just like the Nike Arts and Tradition Centre in Lagos which might be closely patronised by vacationers.

Afrobeats Guidelines the Airwaves

The third shock was the unrivalled dominance of afrobeats on Nigeria’s airwaves and public areas. Afrobeats superiority in Nigeria and Africa normally was not likely information to me. I comply with the favored music scene carefully and I’m an enormous fan of afrobeats. Our driver in Lagos was shocked that I may hum or sing alongside when his automotive radio blared out nice afrobeats songs. His radio was on a default afrobeats channel all through our keep in Lagos.

The shock for us was to expertise a continuing feed of afrobeats songs on the radio, in eating places, resorts and different leisure spots we visited and an nearly full absence of Western music, together with even the almighty rap and R&B.

Nigeria at all times had a wealthy custom of native pop music, akin to highlife, juju, fuji, Fela’s afrobeat, and Nigerian gospel. However these genres of music at all times competed or coexisted with international music, akin to soul, R&B, reggae, nation, Western pop and rap. Even the good Fela didn’t dominate Nigeria’s music scene. And once I was dwelling within the nation within the Eighties, the dominant music we danced to in events was not Nigerian. It was strongly Western. Singers like Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Lionel Richie, Peter Tosh, The Bee Gees, Aretha Franklyn and Whitney Houston had been high drawer.

So it was fairly astonishing to see that afrobeats has nearly squeezed out Western — certainly, most international —music from public areas. Music critics in some nations, akin to Ghana and Cameroon, have complained that Nigerian DJs intentionally refuse to play non-Nigerian songs. Ghana even tried to impose a ‘play Ghana music solely’ coverage in the direction of the top of 2023 to stop the unfold of Afrobeats in Ghana.

Nonetheless, what must be recognised is that there’s a lot expertise, terribly good sounds, and musical output in Nigeria that the nation appears content material to largely eat its personal music. The music scene is very aggressive. Solely a few dozen data have spent six weeks or extra at Quantity One on the Nigerian Turntable Chart because it was launched in 2020.

I don’t suppose that the range and quantity of domestically produced sounds within the Eighties match what’s being produced in the present day. Nigerians appear to have concluded that international sounds are now not higher or nearly as good as Nigerian sounds. This will likely clarify the full domination of Afrobeats within the nation. That is an asset that many Nigerians is probably not conscious of or take significantly.

It appears to me that the Nigerian music market is following the US, UK and different developed music markets by turning into a comparatively closed market. That is what success in a particular line of exercise does: it permits a rustic to develop its personal nationwide area or ecosystem in producing and consuming its merchandise even when those that reside in that area proceed to quarrel, generally bitterly, amongst themselves.

Conclusion

There are various forces making an attempt to tear Nigeria aside. Intercity journey has change into extremely bifurcated. Due to kidnappings, most elites appear to have opted to journey solely by air and have left the unsecure roads to the poor lots.

We needed to go to an old style pal at Idanre in Ondo State, however everybody we spoke with suggested us to not journey by street. Once I was dwelling in Zaria, I as soon as travelled by street to Akure, which was greater than 600 kilometres, on a analysis journey on unions and structural adjustment. We had additionally travelled greater than 1,000 kilometres or 12 hours by street from Windhoek to Gaborone final November. A street journey from Lagos to Akure is barely 4 and half hours, which we may have performed once we missed our flight from Lagos. However we had been terrified of travelling by street and cancelled the journey.

As this piece has proven, nevertheless, non-public industrialists and artists are making nice efforts to attach Nigeria and create a house market, regardless of the insecurities in some domains and far dysfunction on the political degree.

Yusuf Bangura writes from Nyon, Switzerland.