Thanks to its strategic position on the Lomé-Ouagadougou axis, the platform that emerged from the ground in less than a year must now convince a critical mass of entrepreneurs and industrialists.
To reach the canton of Adetikope (pronounced “adetikôpè”), where President Faure Gnassingbè inaugurated the “first industrial platform of Togo” on 6 June, you must first manage to extricate yourself from the capital, its street trapeze artists on a motorcycle and its traffic lights in the Ivorian style, i.e. optional.
Then head north, on National Road 1 called Lomé-Cinkassé (near the Burkinanese and Ghanaian borders), pass the national university, then the US embassy and its blue, off-white and ocher flag, the entrenched delegation of the European Union, finally the austere fences of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and continue for another good ten kilometres.
More than 300 guests made the journey for this meeting – “a historic event” according to the expression of the local Trade, Industry and Consumption Minister, Kodjo Adedze – which concluded with a drone show in the colors of Togo .
Harouna Kaboré, Minister of Commerce of Burkinabè representing President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, Ade Ayeyemi, CEO of the pan-African banking group Ecobank, or Thierry Déau, head of the Meridiam investment fund and partner of the Arise port terminal branch, were so from the party.
A brief moment of glory
Adetikope, a village founded in the 19th century by a local chief, Assimadi Wodenou, and of which a descendant (Togbi Assimadi Yawovi Wodenou II) was still head of the canton that takes its name from him last December, appears in the colonial archives of 1951, when French chroniclers note with annoyance that a borehole in the area provided only “very brackish” water.
From an industrial point of view, the canton enjoyed a brief moment of glory in the early 1990s when Cerekem Exotic Togo, a subsidiary of a Danish group specializing in aromatic plants, set up a 45-hectare agro-industrial complex with 400 employees.
Producer prices (CFA F 100 per kg of basil, F 380 for chives, F 180 for dill in 1999) were sufficient for a time to encourage farmers to abandon local horticulture, but l adventure has been interrupted. In 2006, the French buyer of these assets, Droma, owner of the Daregal brand, threw in the towel, emphasizing the low yields, the cost of inputs, the failure in the transport chain…
Make a dream come true
It is there, however, that the Adetikope Industrial Platform (PIA) was erected in less than a year, with an estimated cost of between 150 and 200 million euros, on an area of 400 hectares, according to the project promoters: the State of Togo (35%) and Arise IIP (65%), led by Gagan Gupta.
For the latter, who cut his teeth within the Singaporean agro-industrial giant Olam, in Gabon in particular, before developing the “verticals” of the Arise group (ports and logistics, infrastructural services, integrated industrial platforms -IIP) , “few countries have managed to turn a dream into reality”.
If PIA, on the day of its inauguration, counted only about twenty scattered containers and hundreds of empty parking lots, for its promoters it is above all a decisive first step of one of the most ambitious paths, accomplished moreover in the difficult context of the Covid -19 emergency crisis.
The site includes a capacity of 12,500 containers, parking for 700 trucks, storage warehouses, as well as a one-stop shop for administrative formalities and a series of concessions granted by the state for the success of the platform.
“In the past two to three months, nearly 700 workers, up from 200 previously, have been working day and night to ensure that the site was ready on time,” explains one of the project initiators.
Breaking an age-old cycle
On this platform about twenty kilometers from Lomé, Arise IIP and the government of President Faure Gnassingbè intend to break a cycle that is more than a century old: the raw export of the country’s natural resources: cotton, soybeans, cashews, wood, limestone (marble).
The country exports about 60 thousand tons of cotton, for a turnover of 75 million dollars, regretted Gagan Gupta who, for the occasion, wanted to give his speech in French. “I hope you like my accent,” said the Indian-born entrepreneur. Thanks to PIA, Togo hopes to multiply by 12 the value of the country’s textile exports, at about 1 billion dollars, by the middle of the decade. A performance “never seen in Africa in such a short time”.
The project promoters also aim to build a soybean processing plant with a capacity of 500 tons per day, as well as sites for processing wood and marble.
Paintballs and upscaling
“Even before the inauguration, seven contracts were signed for the development of plants for the processing of cotton, marble and cashew nuts, as well as in the pharmaceutical and logistics industries,” says American Jesse Damsky, general manager of PIA, without however indicate the companies concerned. According to our information, these would be, among others, Indian and Togolese operators.
The choice of Adetikope for the outfitting of the platform derives in part from its key position on the Lomé-Ouagadougou axis (its market is one of the main supply centers in Togo for cattle from the Sahel countries) and prolongs the expansion that the municipality has known in recent years.
The municipality, benefiting from the expansion of the city of Lomé, experienced exponential growth, going from fewer than 15,000 inhabitants to around 250,000, between 2005 and 2015. Mainly due to speculation, the price per square meter tripled, from less than 2,700 CFA F to more than 8,300 CFA F between 2010 and 2015, according to a study by Iléri Dandonougbo, of the University of Lomé.
According to this researcher, the canton had more than 30 stores in 2015 (6 in 2000), for 65 stores, against 13 fifteen years earlier. The former sleepy town north of Lomé is now even home to the Adrénaline Paintball Club Togo, where for CFA 3,500 per person (CFA 40,000 for a group of 8), young Lomé are invited to trudge around in uniform and “stop from [leurs] opponents with paintballs”…
The experience of Gabon
Within four years, PIA promoters expect the creation of 30,000 PIA-directed jobs. “Obviously, there have already been so many white elephants in Africa that skepticism exists in the face of such ambitions,” acknowledges an industrial logistics specialist.
implementation [de cette ambition] it can be difficult, because we don’t copy anyone.
However, says our source, the group believes they have already proven themselves, particularly in Nkok, near Libreville. According to his estimates, today 40% of the country’s non-oil revenues come from Gabon’s Special Economic Zone (GSEZ).
It should be noted that in ten years of operation, the Nkok area claims 16,000 jobs created. “It should be remembered that when Nkok started, almost 1,500 expatriates were mobilized to train local populations and that after one or two years it was possible to replace the expatriates”, recalls a leader involved in the development of the platform, for whom the experience of Gabon can allow for even faster progress in Togo.
“In ten years, industrial parks and export zones will multiply”
For her part, Victoire Tomegah Dogbé, Prime Minister of Togo, praised Arise’s “expertise and diligence”, as well as the know-how and “holistic” approach to industrial productivity of the Lomé partner in this project.
The head of the Togolese government has indicated that he will anticipate an area of 1,000 hectares in Adetikope by 2030, for a total investment of over 1 billion dollars, and also affirms the “willingness of the government to maintain this future collaboration .
An accelerated program
Will these guarantees be sufficient to attract the critical mass of investors necessary for PIA’s long-term success? It goes without saying that Arise’s multifaceted strategy, between port terminal management, industrial platforms and infrastructural development (Arise IS will participate in the modernization of the Lomé-Cinkassé road), annoys more than one and leaves many African logistics specialists perplexed.
The ambitions expressed at the PIA as well as the accelerated times for its development and its “inauguration”, before the concrete start-up of the industrial sites, have generated their share of skeptics in sub-Saharan business circles. In Lomé, the older ones also remember the great ambitions of the time of Cerekm and Daregal…
“This inauguration is the first step, dozens of others will follow,” says an Arise IIP manager. But the promoter wants to be pragmatic. ” Implementation [de cette ambition] it can be difficult, because we don’t copy anyone. And if we make mistakes, let us know so we can correct them,” Gagan Gupta said on the Adetikope website. No doubt his request will be heard.
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