Stay Connected
Atlanta Black Star/Africa
AfricaNewsWorld

Nigeria Seeks to Offset Economic Woes With Production of Pencils in 2018, Expects to Bring 400,000 Jobs

By | Published on March 24, 2016
CommentsComments (0) Add as a preferred source on Google i

160308155703-pencils-ng-exlarge-169With the value of oil and the Naira currency in decline, Nigeria is turning to old-fashioned pencils to provide relief.

The Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonnaya Onu, recently announced that the first pencil plant in West Africa would start production in 2018.

“We have all the things to produce a pencil, which is used by a large number of people from our young pupils to engineers,” Onu told Nigerian newspaper The Daily Trust.

“The private sector will come in to do the production and we will see the benefits. When production of pencils begins, Nigerians will be amazed at the multiplier effects. It will create a minimum of 400,000 jobs.”

The Minister explained that pencils use raw materials that Nigeria possesses in abundance, such as wood, graphite and rubber. All pencils are currently imported, which has become prohibitively expensive as the Naira struggles.

It is hoped that pencil production can help to revive the manufacturing sector, which has declined since the oil boom of the 1970s.

The textile industry alone employed around 350,000 people in the 1980s, a figure that has fallen to 25,000 today. The total manufacturing sector employed 18 percent of the workforce in 1982, but under 12 percent today.

The government has adopted former President Goodluck Jonathan’s Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan to scale up industrial production. Onu claims that pencils will be the first of 1,000 products that could now be manufactured domestically, with six-cylinder engines next on the list.

Pencils can be a logical first step in developing industrial capacity, believes Professor of Economics Stephen Onyeiwu of Allegheny College.

“Pencils use simple, mature technology and raw materials that can be sourced domestically,” says Onyeiwu. “The size of the market is huge, and we could export to other African countries.”

The Professor believes that success with pencils could pave the way for more sophisticated production. Economic analysts Mckinsey predict Nigerian manufacturing has the potential to deliver output of $144 billion a year by 2030, up from $35 billion in 2013.

Read more at www.cnn.com

Subscribe To The ABS Newsletter — Get our stories in your inbox.

Independent journalism still matters.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Give once Give monthly Support another way

Latest from Atlanta Black Star

Back to top