Coleman Calls For Bold Investments In Telecom Value Chain

The managing director/chief enforcement serviceman of Coleman Wires and Cables Industries Limited, Mr. George Onafowokan, has urged stakeholders successful Nigeria’s telecom assemblage to clasp bold, in-country investments to span accomplishment gaps and thrust indigenous growth.

Speaking astatine the Stakeholders’ Consultative Forum connected Skill Gaps successful the Telecom Value Chain, themed ‘Bridging the Telecom Value Chain Skill Gaps — Empowering Indigenous Talents for Industry Growth’, Onafowokan emphasised that becoming an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) successful Nigeria requires not conscionable courageousness but a willingness to defy scepticism.

He stated that “to go an OEM shaper present means investing successful in-country production, not sitting successful India oregon China and exporting products to Nigeria.”

He cited Coleman’s pioneering efforts successful section production, including the constitution of Nigeria’s archetypal fibre optic cablegram mill successful 2022, with a 60,000-kilometre yearly capacity. He said that by October 2025, a 2nd works successful Shagamu volition beryllium commissioned, boosting full output to implicit 300,000 cablegram kilometres annually.

Onafowokan highlighted that Coleman’s task with planetary elephantine Corning is 100 per cent equity-owned and afloat Nigerian. Yet, section buyers inactive thin to similar imports, saying that “the fibre you bargain from america is precisely the aforesaid arsenic what you get from Corning anyplace else, lone cheaper here.”

As the institution celebrates its 50th day this year, Onafowokan stressed that “Coleman’s occurrence has been built connected continuous training, retraining, and deliberate capableness building. Currently, the institution employs astir 800 staff, with less than 10 expatriates, and astir 50 per cent of its cablegram products are not manufactured elsewhere successful Africa.

“Training, retraining, and processing radical has been the backbone of our growth. We person deliberately invested successful high-technology products, positioning Nigeria arsenic a hub. Our cables interaction each sector; telecoms, power, housing, lipid and gas, making america a captious portion of nationalist development.”