Can someone please explain to me why Nigeria is not on this top 10 shoe production list. Here are the number of pair of shoes manufactured annually by the world’s top 10 producers: 

Ayo Akinfe 

(1) China- 12.6bn
(2) India - 2.1bn 
(3) Brazil- 895m 
(4) Vietnam- 760m
(5) Indonesia - 660m
(6) Pakistan - 295m 
(7) Thailand - 245m
(8) Mexico- 245m
(9) Italy - 205m
(10) Turkey - 175m

With a population of 200m people, surely Nigeria must manufacture at least 400m shoes a year. Maybe this is just a case of poor record keeping but I would like to know how many pairs of shoes our local cobblers produce annually.

More to the point, what are we doing about expanding production? For starters, we need to expand leather production dramatically, which brings us back to the matter of mega cattle ranches.

Do you know that the global footwear industry is worth $365.5bn? China alone exports about $47.2bn worth of shoes annually, which is about the same amount of revenue Nigeria generates from crude oil a year. 

We need these mega ranches like yesterday. Also, our state governors need to reach out to the likes of Nike, Adidas, Puma, Crocs, Converse, Reebok, Birkenstock, New Balance, Dr Martens, Brooks, etc, offering them five-year tax holidays, 50 year land leases, etc if they open manufacturing plants that employ a minimum of 1,000 staff.

Nigeria may not have noticed it but since 2010, Adidas has cut the share of footwear it makes in China in half. Vietnam has absorbed most of that business and with the coronavirus pandemic, this process is likely to be accelerated with companies like Adidas looking for new locations for their manufacturing plants like Nigeria.