In Ogun State on Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari officially opened the African Quality Assurance Center.
At the AQAC’s commissioning on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in Sagamu, the president praised the African Export and Import Bank (AFRIXEMBANK) for the recently inaugurated facility.
He emphasized how crucial the center is to enhancing quality control for home use.
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The center will support such a program, the president claims, and assure producers that raw materials from Nigeria are of the highest acceptable quality.
The president, who was represented by Niyi Adebayo, Minister of Industry, Trade, and Investment, stated that this pioneering quality assurance facility in Africa puts Nigeria on the right track as “We continue to advance Nigeria’s industrialization.”
Additionally, the president is certain that this will boost the confidence of manufacturers and producers that any raw materials “We make locally are of the highest acceptable standards.”
Buhari added that the AQAC would place Nigeria’s industrialization on firm ground, create jobs, and solve the appalling unemployment rate.
The president claims that it would increase domestic consumption since the protection of the lives and wellbeing of our citizens through assuring the quality of their food is a top priority.
The launch of the African Quality Assurance Centre, according to Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun, symbolizes the government’s desire to diversify the country’s economy away from its over-reliance on crude oil.
In addition, he underlined the center’s advantages for the economy, creating jobs, enabling trade on the continent and outside, and boosting the export and consumption of nutritious food.
The governor noted that the intra-African trade rate is currently about 14%, compared to the intrastate-regional trade rates of Europe, North America, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which are respectively 60%, 40%, and 30%.
Therefore, he hailed the center’s commissioning, which cost $11 million, as another indication of the African Export and Import Bank’s (AFRIXEMBANK) commitment to being a partner in Ogun State’s development plan.
“We genuinely feel honored to have contributed to this success story. Our goal is still to provide Ogun State with focused, high-quality administration and to foster a public-private sector alliance, both of which are essential to the state’s residents’ long-term economic growth and personal prosperity.
“For us in Ogun State, we understood the strategic value of agriculture in the growth of the economy of Nigeria, and specifically Ogun State. Therefore, I.S.E.Y.A was added to our development pillars, he said.
Food security, agro value chain growth, and agro-industrial transformation were mentioned by Abiodun as the three key goals in the agricultural sector.
The standard and inadequate infrastructure were highlighted by Prof. Benedict Oramah, President of AFREXIMBANK, as barriers to African export.
Oramah claims that the bank wants to construct quality certification centers all over Africa in order to facilitate the standard of African export.
“The center will raise the bar by testing export items from member nations to ensure they meet approved standards, enhancing the continent’s competitiveness in the global market,” he continued.
He also emphasized the bank’s plans to spend $100 million to build quality assurance centers around Nigeria.
Mrs. Kanayo Awani, Executive Vice President of the Intra-African Trade Bank of AFREXIMBANK, Mr. Marc Roussel, Senior Vice President of Africa Bureau Veritas, and Mrs. Oluranti Doherty, Director of Export Development of AFREXIMBANK were among those in attendance for the commissioning.
