According to Business Day, a newspaper, the Aba leather industry has about 80,000 players operating in different clusters across the town. These players engage in the production of shoes, bags and trunk boxes, producing 48 million pairs of shoes annually at an average price of 2500 naira which gives it a market value of $333 million (120 billion naira). Its global competitors include China which produces 12.6 billion pairs of leather shoes and exports shoes and leather products worth $9.1 billion, and Vietnam which produces 760 million pairs annually with an export value of $6 billion. Indonesia, in third place, produces 660 million pairs with $2.6 billion in shoes exports while Italy produces 205 million shoes with export value of billions of dollars too.

There are different factors responsible for why the Aba shoe industry is not globally competitive. They include:

• Unavailability of export data on footwear
• Players in the leather industry not utilizing the internet in marketing and distribution of products
• High lending rate by Nigerian banks which has made manufacturing not globally competitive
• Unavailability of the manufacturers to get animal skins locally 
• Utilization of crude machines in production.

In May 2008, The Common Facility Centre was established in Aba as a partnership between the United Nations Industrial Development Organization(UNIDO), and  the Federal Government of Nigeria, to aid workers in the Leather and Garment sector to exploit external economies through collective effort and sharing common facilities for enhanced processing of their products, and to serve as a Centre of Excellence for capacity building and provision of cutting edge technology for competitiveness enhancement.  About eleven years after it was established, the majority of the Aba shoemakers have refused to utilize the facility as they don’t understand the purpose behind its set up.

The following solutions can solve this friction:

– Upgrade of Facilities and Provision of Manpower for the Common Facility Centre: Considering the fact that the centre hasn’t been utilized in a long time, its facilities need to be upgraded in line with modern requirements. Also, efficient manpower that will run it should be recruited.

– Training Aba Manufacturers with Latest Skills and Technologies: Aba shoes and other leather product manufacturers should be trained in skills such as Industrial and Product Design, Additive Manufacturing and usage of modern machines which automate shoe production to enable them produce more faster at the Common Facility Centre.

– Encourage Aba Manufacturers to Utilize its Facility for Manufacturing their Products: Aba manufacturers should use the Common Facility Centre to produce their products at scale for them to be globally competitive.

– Provision of Credit to Aba Manufacturers at Single Digit: The lending rate of 22 percent to 30 percent by banks in Nigeria is an impediment to the competitiveness of the Aba leather industry when its counterparts in China and other countries access funds at less than 10 percent.

– Utilizing E-Commerce Platforms for Marketing and Distribution: The Aba Shoe and other leather industry players need to utilize e-commerce platforms like Jumia and Konga for marketing and sales of their shoes since they are the biggest channels in Nigeria and Africa. Also, Amazon.com should be used for distribution to global consumers.

– Creating of a Blockchain Platform to track the leather product value chain: Blockchain is a secure  ledger shared by all parties in a decentralized network  which records and stores every transaction that occurs in the network.  A Blockchain platform which will track the production, sales and distribution, of all the players in the Aba leather industry will provide data which is tamper-proof and will validate the economic status of the industry.

If we implement these suggestions, we will get Africa’s largest cluster of shoe making working at maximum level besides being globally competitive.

I hate betting. However, if you put a gun to my head and ask me to place a bet on something or you pull the trigger, I would place a bet on digital marketing. This is because, in the marketing arena, I have observed digital marketing delivering outstanding results that are unthinkable in traditional marketing. 

Nevertheless, lots of small business owners still prefer traditional marketing because it is what they are used to – or because they haven’t heard of digital marketing. My aim for writing this post is to share some of the good news of digital marketing and to prove why I believe it is the best bet. 

Marketing budget

For many medium- and large-size companies, the marketing budget is fat. They don’t mind paying one million Naira for a full-page newspaper ad. Small businesses, however, don’t have that luxury – and this is one of the vital reasons to go digital. 

On social media, most especially on Facebook and Instagram, you can run an ad for as low as ?1000. Digital platforms such as Google My Business and local business directories are free to use and can get you lots of customers. 

Audience targeting 

In traditional marketing and advertising, marketing messages are delivered to everybody, whether the person is interested or not interested in the product and service. Advertisers are helpless and can only pray the target audience comes across the advertisement. 

But in the case of digital marketing, as an advertiser, you can target the people that are likely to buy from you. Google and social media ads are delivered by algorithms that allow advertisers to target people based on their demographics, interests, and behaviours on the internet. 

No wasting of money on marketing to people not interested in your offers. 

Return on investment

If a small business is to survive, every kobo spent on marketing must deliver at least double the money spent. By going digital, the chance of getting a return on investment (ROI) is high, as campaigns are cheaper and the conversion rate is higher. 

Campaigns are measurable

How possible is it to know the number of people that read your fliers? What about the number of people that listen to your ad broadcast on radio? It’s impossible.

However, in the case of digital marketing, it is possible for you to know the number of people that come across your marketing messages. In fact, it is possible to know the number of people that consume your marketing messages to the end and those that stop along the way. 

There are lots of digital marketing tools that give insights into your audience. To mention a few, Google Analytics shows you how people interact with your website; social media management software shows you how people interact with your posts; and email marketing platform lets you know if recipients open your email. 

I doubt if you can know if a recipient reads your letter of introduction delivered by NIPOST, Nigeria’s postal service.

Campaigns are adjustable

This point is related to the last. Through digital marketing, you can measure the results of your marketing campaign on-the-go – and make an adjustment or stop the campaign it isn’t working. In the same vein, If a campaign is succeeding, you can double down on it. 

This is possible because almost all digital marketing platforms allow you to edit and adjusting on-going campaigns. 

As for traditional marketing, on the other hand, campaigns are almost cast in stone. You can do little or nothing to adjust an ongoing campaign. Even a small typographic error in a print publication can’t be corrected: the publication has to be reprinted. 

With the points above, you would agree with me that digital marketing is indeed the best bet if you own small business. Note that the above points don’t mean that you should totally ignore traditional marketing. Your overall marketing strategies should be a mix of both digital and traditional. But digital marketing should be at the centre of your marketing strategies, because of its effectiveness. 

They say life will not give you everything you want but everything you want in life has been given.

Unemployment is no longer a new topic. In fact, it is a global topic. It’s the song on everyone’s lips. 

These days, finding a job is down to connection or fortune. It’s no longer like it was back then in the 90s when graduates get jobs immediately after graduation. 

Every year, institutions produced thousands of graduates with no employment opportunities to absorb them. This has led to a major problem in Africa and the world at large. 

How do we tackle unemployment in Africa?

The only effective way unemployment can be tackled is through entrepreneurship. Everyone must embark on entrepreneurship. Graduates should have the mindset of creating jobs and not looking for jobs. That is the only way we can reduce the rate of unemployment drastically.

Moyosola Iwashokun, an ‘Industrial Chemistry’ graduate shared her own taste of unemployment and what led her into full-time entrepreneurship in a very short interview with me.

 Can we get to know?

”My name is Moyosola Iwashokun. I am a graduate of the University of Ilorin where I studied Industrial Chemistry (2012-2016).

 Where are you from?

”I grew up in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, so I can basically say, I’m from Lagos.”

 How did you develop an interest in shoemaking?

”As a lady with the hijab, I have a love for nice fitting footwear. I would always look at my feet to see if they are well fitted in my shoes. Then I discovered that I actually have an interest in anything that has got to do with shoes.

Can you share a bit more about your shoemaking business?

”The shoemaking story began when I was in University. Although it wasn’t quite easy because I went to a school (University of Ilorin) which was quite fast in running her academic calendar, so balancing my studies and shoe learning training wasn’t rosy but it was definitely worth the stress.”

 Did you ever job hunt after graduation?

”Of course, I did. In 2018, when I had finished serving my country, I tried so hard to secure a job so I could practice my discipline ’Industrial Chemistry’. I wasn’t successful in my job hunt but I was able to think differently. I thought of combining my discipline with shoemaking business since I saw synergy between the two. Although I never got the job I wanted but I was able to land a teaching job.”

 How were you able to cope with your business and the teaching job?

”I was drenched, I had to pull out to face my craft, that is, shoemaking business.” 

What can you say about the business?

”Shoemaking is enthralling to me and making every feet count is my goal.” 

How can we find you whenever we need your shoe?

”My company name is Gbayi_Signaturez.

My phone contact: 08165334993

My IG handle: @gbayi_signaturez”

 Feel free to connect with Moyosola.