A recent report by Nanyang Technology University’s Centre for African Studies has revealed that Nigeria’s poor electricity contributes to up to a 40% rise in the cost of manufactured products.

Nigeria’s manufacturing sector can employ a larger share of the labour force, and has far higher productivity than agriculture, according to a report titled “Back to Growth: Priority Agenda for the Economic Revival of Nigeria,” which was recently presented in Lagos by the author and Director of the Centre, Amit Jain.

“Electricity blackouts, together with transport bottlenecks, crime, and corruption, are among the key impediments to firm growth. Outages and voltage fluctuations are commonplace.

“This damages machinery and equipment. Consequently, most firms rely on self-supply of electricity through the use of generators, which increases the cost of production and erodes competitiveness”, the report said.

Nigeria’s underdeveloped power sector makes it difficult for the country to achieve widespread economic development and compels the majority of companies to produce a sizable amount of their own electricity. The nation has recently seen the departure of well-known companies due to growing operating expenses.

Given the challenges in ensuring steady power supply throughout the nation, the report suggested the government look into creating industrial clusters. The primary advantage of clustering businesses, according to the report, is that it makes it possible to prioritise infrastructure development in order to give businesses a competitive edge while providing access to resources like raw materials, skilled labour, and technology.

It read further, “The clusters should ideally be located within zones that are well connected with roads, power lines, and telecommunications.

“Although Nigeria has scored some success with informal clusters, such as the computer village in Otigba, Lagos; the auto and industrial spare parts fabricators in Nnewi; the leather tannery in Kano; and the footwear, leatherworks, and garment cluster in Aba, very few are working to their full potential.

“Lack of coordination between the federal and state governments and patchy implementation of industrial policy has meant that the infrastructure required to attract manufacturing investment is inadequate.”