Director General of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria Joseph Odumodu, discuses how the Africa Standards Organisation under his leadership, is enhancing trade on the continent, he spoke with Crusoe Osagie. Excerpts:

As President of ARSO, what stage are you now in terms of harmonisation of standards across the region and the enhancement of intra-African trade?

I will like to do some introductions. In 1991 I think, there was what they call the Abuja treaty and it was in that treaty ‎that African countries talked about the creation of Africa economic community. I do recall again that in that treaty, they identified the importance of quality infrastructure in the development of the African continent and there were other issues that they highlighted at that time, pointing out that African countries were not trading with each other enough but trading with other economic communities. What was also identified as a major constraint was the fact that we were already used to the quality of products coming from other continents but apparently, we do 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. Just as in the case of Nigeria, nobody thought of how we can use standards to develop our economy. Today, at least in the last four to five years, everybody is talking about quality infrastructure and even though we have lived measurements, standardisation and the likes, defining standards in the context of how they can help to facilitate trade was never seen as an option.
I am not sure we created that linkage, although SON was there developing standards and sometimes they go to industries and force people for not complying with the standards and all that. Today, we now know if we want to trade with Ghana or South Africa for example, we need to speak the same language. I gave an analogy at a conference, saying that our mothers know how to cook , I do not know about yours but my mother was the best cook ever. If she wanted to cook, she does not need to read from any standards book, because they know how to get the right measure of ingredients and it comes out wonderful because she already knows what the standard is. If you cook for yourselves, maybe you do not need the standards or you can put the standards in your head, but if you want to cook for somebody else, you must begin to look at how can we cook for everybody so that we all can accept the same taste. Think about cooking for another country, and this is where the issue of harmonisation comes in because 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 competitive and comparative advantage. In Africa today, we are known for exporting agricultural products to other parts of the world and that has also defined where we have found competencies. So if you look at cocoa, cotton and the likes, you will see those are the areas were Africa has done business with Europe and America, this is what we have tried to do to begin first of all, to do business with each other. We have cocoa in Nigeria, we have cocoa in Ghana, but because of our agricultural and geographical differences, the cocoa in Nigeria may have certain advantages over the cocoa in Ghana or vice versa. I will give you an example, cocoa has the tendency to take what they call heavy metals from around it like lead and mercury, so in defining a standard for cocoa you must modify the limits for some of those heavy metals and the impacts on health. Today in Africa, we have actually harmonised standards for maize, garri, lots of products in the agricultural sector that we have harmonised. We have also defined in the area of engineering, where we have the ability to develop products. Today, we have about 800 standards that we have already harmonised. However, in some areas, what we are doing within Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), we do in East Africa, the SADEC region and we are also working with the northern African group. There is a lot of work that has been done within ECOWAS and East Africa. In fact, the East Africans have already started harmonising with the southern Africa through their Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). So they have already done a lot of work, but even at the auspices of ARSO, all we have done was to select some of them to get them harmonised and somehow, I tell people that Africa seems to blessed with strong countries in each of these groups Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. These are the countries that are leading the process of harmonisation. Have we achieved where we should be, no, we have not. Have we started redefining intra-Africa trade from 10 per cent to 25 per cent. We have not reached there but I think we have created enough basis for these businesses to happen. I also realised that apart from quality infrastructure, there are also other forms of infrastructure that are required. For example, you must create some geographic linkages. If I want to travel to Cameroun sometimes, it may actually be easier for me to travel to London and return to Cameroun. We need to create this linkage because it is how the goods we move, that will also make people able to move. The good news is that the African Heads of States defined the Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) to be promulgated by 2017. Some people say it is too early but we do not think it is too early because we are working towards it. We believe we can cross the bridge when we get there. We are creating an opportunity for the Heads of State to make the decision. In fact, I am heading to South Africa for a meeting and in that meeting, we are all meteorology, standardisation, accreditation. All the groups in Africa ‎‎are meeting because we need to submit a paper to the Africa Heads of States and it is all in furtherance to the realisation of the 2017 free trade area. You cannot force anybody to do anything. It is a kind of mutual consent. If we do this, it will be beneficial to us in Africa, if we do this, it will industrialise Africa. Africa has a huge population and it is also growing. In fact, when I look at Africa and I look at Nigeria, I realised we face the same challenges. We are saddled with invasion of substandard products, poverty, disease and all that, but I think what we can do is using standardisation to break down trade barriers and also ensure that we can build a more robust economy for Africa. We are looking at ways of supporting our weaker African brothers. Some of them do not even have standards body, so those of us who are developed in standards, give to them and also do what we call bilateral and mutual recognition agreement so that we can trade seamlessly in such a way that we can support them and learn from each other about what we have done successfully to build a better Africa.

To achieve this, there will be need for capacity development across the countries. How can you make this happen in an organised manner?

When we do ECOWAS harmonisation, it is led by Nigeria. I do not want to mention the names of the countries, they are not endowed with what we have, so we are the ones who leads the process. Today, I hear South Africa has a 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 have done some things for Cameroun, we have trained some other countries like Liberia where they set up their standard bodies and we helped as Nigerians 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, apart from being our brother’s keeper, we need to build everybody to come to the same level. If we do not come to the same level, how can we trade because we cannot speak the same language and others. So those are some of the things we are currently working on. I must say Kenya has really done a lot in the area of 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, we are doing it for Africa

It seems West Africa is still left behind in the facilitation of the CFTA agenda. What is happening especially with Nigeria being the driving force?

I do not know if it is an accident, but yes, ECOWAS appears to be at the tail end of the progress that we have made so far. I must say that we have made progress in the last two years. Our lack of appreciable progress is also as a result of our historical antecedents. We have two “ECOWASes” basically. There is this tendency for not speaking enough with each other. So we have the French speaking and the English countries and even within the English speaking countries, we do not speak with one voice. What we have also done is to provide the leadership that we can use to drive the facilitation. Today, I am president of ARSO, I do not want to a situation where we will be regional economic group that will keep Africa behind. Like I said, we have made so much progress in the last two years, but East and Central Africa are so far ahead already. They are also reasons why they are far ahead. There is geographical, there is language and there is a lot of traffic amongst them. Also, most of the multilateral agencies, sometimes whether by accident, reside between those two communities. For example, we have the United Nations Economic Community for Africa (UNECA). They are all over there ensuring that a strong Africa is being built, we are making better efforts. Look at Nigeria for instance, when we started in 2011, Nigeria did not have meteorology, accreditation but today, Nigeria is coming up strong. We have actually within two or three years, built enough grounds to level out with countries like South Africa, Kenya and others and I can assure you that in the next two years, we will clearly be at par with all of them. That parity is also what will help to accelerate the process of integration in Africa.

You said a lot of products have been harmonised. Is there any common product within this region that has been dumped or that has refused to be harmonised?

‎I am not actually tracking what has not been harmonised. Let me give you an example, garri has been harmonised in Africa and if you say garri in South Africa or in Nigeria anywhere, it is the same garri because it has the same specifications anywhere. When we are harmonising, it is at the level of international community and because of technological advances, you will never begin to see products that are being dropped but in Africa, we have not attained that level. We really need to put up efforts to harmonise before we begin to dump any products.

How many more standards are you planning to develop in the nearest future?

I do not have a figure off hand, but in the next one year because I have one year to go, we will make sure that we would have gone up to 1500 from 800. Harmonisation is driven by the market need. We do not want to harmonise for the sake of it, but harmonise what we can trade on with each other. For example in Cameroun, they have a factory that does intermediates for cocoa powder and all that, we have cocoa (crude), we can harmonise with them ‎so that we can also feed into that industry that they have there. One good thing about harmonisation is that you can use what you have done partly to continue to do some work elsewhere in a very seamless way. It is as if you are running one factory.

How does ARSO intend to tackle issue of dumping in the region?

In all 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 Africa stepped back in the last 10 to 15 years and if you investigate this, you will find out that the growth of certain Asian economies also resulted in decline of industrialisation in Africa, this is not the problem, I think the challenge is because of the weak framework in Africa, it is easy to bring those products into the continent, but there is nothing wrong bringing in products that attracts the right price and quality, but the point is when you are selling substandard products into the African economy. It is not fair and actually inhuman as far as I am concerned. What we have done is work with our colleagues to share our best practices. For instance, I think I became president of ARSO because they believe that we have gone ahead in Nigeria because there were some certain initiatives we introduced and we pursued them single-mindedly, but one think that shocked me was every country we went to, were going through the same challenges as Nigeria. I think they must have found out that there were some initiatives we introduced such as issues of registering the products, issues of consumer education because the reason why these products come into Africa is because the African consumers are very ignorant. So we are sharing best practices, experiences and also helping our weaker colleagues. Remember, if Africa forms a CFTA, the weakest point will be the weakest countries where these products can come into and get to the rest of Africa. So everybody must be at the same level and this is what we have committed ourselves to achieve.

‎As a strong regulatory agency in this country, how do you ensure that most of the goods coming from this neighbouring countries are checked looking at crisis happening in the manufacturing sector?

This question is actually outside of ARSO, but I will make some ‎comments about it. If we must operate a common tariff within any economic zone, we must have the same standards in products, services, and the same regulatory system. If the system in Nigeria is more stringent than the one in Ghana, then the products can come from Ghana and flow into other places and it will be unfair. I believe what Nigeria’s position has been with the Common External Tariff (CET), is that we must first of all ensure that everything is not just all about standards, we must harmonise practices beyond just the standards you know, regulations, customs, immigration and then we can open up our borders as one zone. We have not attained it and I think it will be unfair especially on the bigger economies to open up ourselves because like you said the manufacturing companies will be at the loosing end. It is also very critical to us because we should ask ourselves if there are factories in other African countries that can compete with Nigeria, so what do they do, they pull from outside and circulate from inside which leads to an unfair competition, but I believe the government of Nigeria is in a position to take the best economic decision for Nigerians.

As Director General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), you visited one of the Asian countries identified to be one of the major culprits, as ARSO President, what are your plans to check mate t‎his situation?

We are engaging those people at another level, we are engaging them at the level of Africa Union (AU). Those are the kind of initiative we are also canvassing. The point is, 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 of our strategy to say let us fight as one because we have the critical mass and if Africa says if you do not make products to meet our minimum requirements, we will ban products coming from another continent, they will not have a choice than to listen very clearly because I am sure Africa constitutes maybe over 50 per cent of their manufacturing output.

Having made all these efforts at the regional, national and sub-regional level, can you pick out some segments of the economy in Nigeria that are beginning to feel the trickle down benefits of some of your actions?

Yes, maybe a few but I think one that sticks out very easily is the cable area, we have done a lot of intervention within the cable sector and I am happy because the cable manufacturers are giving testimonies that things are better for them. I must also say that if you go to some of them like Coleman cables, they have actually made huge investments in recent times. I was speaking with somebody some days ago, he also said he has gotten some lines of credit from the Bank of Industry (BOI) planning to invest in heavy duty armoured cables. There are very exciting testimonials. We also can talk about the galvanised metal products, the ones we call zinc. When did some review of standards, we actually found out that almost 30,000 positions were filled within the industry and now those people have been able to export their products outside of Nigeria but the most astonishing for me is in the reinforcement bars. If you go and ask the big construction companies especially the multinationals in Nigeria, way back in 2011, they imported everything from abroad and of course it costs them more because you have to put money on the ground to import products. Today, most of them are importing less than 20 per cent of their requirements because they have found the local reinforcement bars competing at the same levels with the international products they were buying. I think these are all very positive things we can all lay hands on. For the reinforcement bars, we told them we needed to create some traceability, so today, if any building comes down or I go to the market, I can tell you who made what. In a case of building collapse, during the investigation, we will be able to tell where and who made what because there are identity marks. When I assumed office, I found out that most of the manufacturers do not have quality assurance systems. We insisted that they must have, they must buy equipments and those equipments must be calibrated and people who will operate these equipments must be well trained. These are also some positive outcomes on the quality of products. I think what is critical on this job is having the passion and a single minded approach to pursue set goals and if you do that, people will comply. What we have seen in Africa is that if you look away, people cut corners to make profit because the consumers are ignorant, but once you flog people to fall in line, they will respond positively but do not loose concentration, because if you do, they go back to their old ways.

Are there any windows of opportunity given to manufacturers in SONCAP to fast track their import processes?

The SONCAP is a scheme to keep away products that do not meet 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 because these people need their materials when they need ‎them and secondly, they are already faced with a lot of challenges, such as infrastructure issues, delays at the port and others. What we have done is to make sure that there is a small window created for manufacturers to obtain permit to bring in those products as against those bringing in finished goods. I think the manufacturing industry is better for it.

How far have you gone to reduce the preponderance of fakes and before ARSO summit you talked about setting up a recycling plant to recycle substandard products instead of destroying them. Is that arrangement still on course?

Yes, but you know we are government and we cannot go setting up recycling plants, but what we have done is encourage businessmen to invest in recycling plants. For example, when we seize tyres and you know tyres contain some metals, rubbers. The rubbers can be used by cement plants or any other heavy industries for providing energy basically and the other parts go to the steel industries as raw materials, but generally, the level of substandard products have reduced in the last three years. It may have been constant in the last two years, I mean whatever level it is, it has remain constant and the reason is obvious. I said to somebody that government in its wisdom, removed the SON from being at the ports and that singular action hampered the drive for reducing substandard products in Nigeria because today, we are not at the ports and we do not even know what is coming into the country. As a learned organisation, we have devised another alternative by going to the markets, the markets are risky, they are more difficult and we are also limited. There are 1400 people in SON and there are over 1400 markets in Nigeria. So I cannot even take one staff to a market and I do not know how effective one person will be in the market. It does appear that we have slowed down in our drive to reduce substandard goods in the country. Today, our statistics show that electronic and electrical products constitute over half of the substandard products. What we have done now is that within one month, we are launching a campaign on what we call operation flush. We are going to focus on electrical and electronic products and you will hear because if I am running a campaign you must hear because I am doing it in a way that if people do not complain, then, you are not effective. People are even going to complain to the President, saying that this man is destructing our business, but actually, we must destruct business of people who do not want to do the right things. So we are going to hit them and also hit at all levels. We will go to the markets and we are also reviewing SONCAP certification for those products, but we are also going to be talking to the consumers. It is going to be a three point approach, this is why we call it operation flush. The consumer must also be tutored on what to look out for when they want to buy an electrical or electronic products. The more people stay away from these products, the lesser they bring it in. I can tell you to watch out, before the end of the year, you will see a new zeal of life for our industries because there is an inverse relationship between reduction of substandard products and the health of the manufacturing industry. It is as simple as that.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TradeMark Africa.