Document(s) 19 of 29

Introduction

Objectives

• to appraise of the nature and level of technical change in the cement sector, with a view to identifying elements of technology transfer from foreign vendors of technology;

• to identify the process of human resources development in the industry, with a view to identifying technical and organizational learning efforts;

• to determine and analyze past and present trends in the growth of the selected firms in the Nigerian environment;

• to appraise firm-level machinery for evidence of acquisition of technology; and

• to draw lessons for those formulating policies for the development of the chemical and petrochemical sector.

Methodology

The methodology can be divided into the following phases of activities, which were not necessarily sequential:

• desk research;

• interviews and field trips in Nigeria;

• study and consultation at the Science Policy Research Unit (spru) of the University of Sussex; and

• overseas trip to the United Kingdom to see the research and development (R&D) and overseas divisions of Blue Circle Industries (BCI).

Desk research

Interviews and field trips in Nigeria

• the Federal Ministry of Industries, Abuja;

• the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, Lagos;

• the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research;

• the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru (near Jos);

• the Nigerian Industrial Development Bank;

• the Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (CMAN); and

• the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.

Manufacturing ordinary Portland cement

Raw materials

In some cases, corrective components are added with the raw materials to compensate for defects. Such components may include sand (to increase the silica), iron oxide or bauxite (to increase the alumina, especially in special types of cement), and china clay (to minimize the iron in white cement). Calcium fluoride and calcium sulphate are useful in lowering the temperature required for a given combination of raw materials and may yield an improved quality. Gypsum is added to retard setting in the finished product. Powdered blast-furnace slag may be used as an extender to reduce fuel consumption in the manufacturing process.

The fuel needed for OPC manufacture is coal, gas, or oil. The choice depends on economics and the process used. Colliery waste, oil shales, domestic refuse, used tires, rice husks, and sewage sludge have also been tried as novel fuels to supplement to the conventional ones.

The manufacturing of OPC consists of three major unit operations: raw-meal preparation, heat treatment, and cement milling.

Raw-meal preparation

After stockpiling is the raw-milling stage, in which the raw material is ground to a powder fine enough (up to 15% residue captured on a 90 mm sieve) to burn in the kiln. The raw materials plus any composition-correcting additives are dried and intermittently mixed during the raw-milling stage. There are several raw-milling systems, the choice of which is dictated by the moisture content of the raw material:

1. The air-swept ball mill dries material with up to 8% moisture content. It uses hot kiln-exhaust gases and the heat generated during grinding, along with auxiliary furnace heat for moister materials.

2. The semi-air-swept centre-discharge mill dries material in an attached chamber and can handle materials with up to 12% moisture content.

3. The non-air-swept ball mill dries material in the separator but is unsuitable for materials with greater than15% moisture content.

4. The Taden hammer–ball mill dries raw materials with up to 12% moisture content. The drying occurs in the hammer mill. Hot exhaust gases from the kiln or an auxiliary furnace are used.

5. The vertical-spindle or ring-roller mill can handle raw materials up to 125 mm, with 15% moisture content.

Heat treatment

The kiln is cylindrical and slightly inclined horizontally, and it rotates at about 1–4 rpm. The solid material rolls down the kiln and is blow about by cyclones of combustion exhaust from a gas, oil, or pulverized-coal flame at the lower end. The kiln is generally refractory, lined throughout its hot zones with a variety of bricks for insulation. The back end of the chain zone in a wet-process kiln is usually unlined. The processes occurring in the kiln are the evaporation of any water; the thermal decomposition of clay minerals (at 300–650°C) and calcite (800–950°C); the formation of some liquid (at about 1250°C); and, finally, the formation of clinker (at over 1400°C). The clinker emerges from the kiln and passes into a cooler, where convective air flow cools it to a level suitable for subsequent handling and milling. The heat is reclaimed and recycled to the kiln as secondary combustion air. Other gases reclaimed from the suspension preheater (SP) and precalcinator systems (discussed in the dry process), along with the coolers, are used as primary combustion air in the kiln; excess air from the cooler is cleaned and exhausted into the atmosphere.

The whole assembly of precalcinator, SP, rotary kiln, and cooler is usually air sealed, as it operates under a slight vacuum. The sealant helps to prevent air infiltration (which lowers the efficiency of the system) and dust emission.

The dry process The dry process is probably the best. The powdered, blended meal, with about 0.5% moisture content, is fed initially into the SP, a system of cyclones or similar devices, where it is recirculated and heated by a mixture of countercurrent and cocurrent flows of the kiln-exhaust gases. This system contains one to five bands of cyclones, depending on the energy-balance calculations at the design stage. Temperature gradients of the inlet solid feed and exit gas are 50–70°C (for the solids) and 350–1200°C (for the gas).

When about half or more of the total fuel is burned in or below the SP system and outside the kiln proper, the arrangement is referred to as a precalcinator; in this case, the temperature of the feed entering the kiln may be > 900°C. The precalcinator results in the decarbonation of a major portion of the calcium carbonate in the raw mill before the kiln stage. The kiln completes the decarbonation and heat treatment. This whole process takes less time than the wet process.

The wet process The material fed to the kiln in a wet process usually has about 30–40% moisture content and contains deflocculants to ease pumping. The slurry feed is pumped directly to the upper, or back, end of the kiln, which is usually about 6 m in diameter and about 200 m in length. Steel chains are hung in the dry zone near the back end of the kiln to transfer heat from the hot gases to the moist slurry feed. Toward the end of the chain system, the slurry feed forms nodules, and these are sent out from the zone, dried, and partly decarbonated. Farther down the kiln, the feed is further decarbonated and then clinkered before it leaves the kiln and enters the cooler system.

The semiwet and semidry processes The semiwet process is a modification of the wet process. The slurry is dehydrated in a filter press to form a cake with about 20% moisture content before being broken and fed directly into either a long, chained kiln or a preheater, such as a moving Lepol grate or disintegrator cyclone system, and, thence, to a short kiln.

In the Lepol, or semidry process, the raw materials are pretreated as in the dry process. The powder is nodulized to approximately 15 mm spheres, with about 12% moisture content, in an inclined rotating dish or drum. The nodules are then fed onto a moving grate, where some drying, preheating, and partial decarbonation take place prior to the kiln stage. Subsequent treatment is similar to that in the dry process.

Cement milling

Newer mills tend to be closed-circuit systems and are generally bigger than the open-circuit type. Diameters as large as 4.5 m are not uncommon. In the closed-circuit system, the product is split to provide a coarse-reject stream (which is recycled in the mill for regrinding) and a fine-product stream.

Ball milling generally produces heat, so a fan may be used. Alternatively, a cement-cooling system may be introduced in the closed-circuit operation, outside the mill, and internal water sprays may be used at the mill inlet and outlet.

The ground cement is stored in large silos until packaging and distribution.

Blue Circle Industries

BCI ranks very highly in the UK economy, consistently in the top 120 industries. Its turnover is about 1 billion GBP per annum (in 1995, 0.63 pounds sterling [GBP] = 1 United States dollar [USD]). BCI also enjoys a huge financial profit on its investments at home and abroad.

The activities of BCI are not limited to the UK market. In fact, it has tentacles all over the world. In the United States, BCI has investments in cement manufacturing, cement and allied-products sales, building materials, and the soft construction market. In Chile and Mexico, BCI has similar investments in cement manufacturing and allied products. In Africa, the group has investments in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. The multinational also has investments in Asia.

To oversee its considerable overseas investments, BCI created the Blue Circle Overseas (BCO) Division. BCO is located at the Portland House, London, the corporate headquarters of BCI. Within BCO, there is a department responsible for the coordination of the transfer of technical know-how to the overseas plants. This division helps ensure the optimal performance of the plants through the technical services it provides. It also uses other instruments, such as technical-services agreements (TSAs), expatriate placements, management-services agreements, project management, and training.

BCO contracts for technical person–hours as a form of assistance to overseas companies; these are worth as much as about 1 million GBP per annum. This is to implement the TSA schemes, whereby overseas companies gain access to all BCI technical know-how in the form of technical literature, R&D reports, technical information, etc. The TSA is usually independent of BCI's level of investment in the host economy. Also within the framework of the TSA, a two-person project team periodically visits and makes a report, a copy of which is forwarded to the client. Future repair or refurbishment projects on the works are planned on the basis of this report.

BCO also assists by arranging for the placement of expatriates in overseas companies within the group. This schedule is independent of the TSA, and the mode of payment to the expatriates varies from country to country, depending on prevailing conditions.

BCI is the technical partner to two Nigerian cement-manufacturing companies: Ashaka Cement Company, based in Bauchi, and WAPCO, based in Lagos. Some of the specific elements of the TSA between BCO and WAPCO include

• testing the calibration of equipment and measuring instruments;

• advancing milling (i.e, by carrying out grained ability tests on samples);

• designing major items of equipment when needed (e.g., the quarry conveyor system at Shagamu Works); and

• training, in the form of a cement technology course in the United Kingdom.

The Nigerian industrial sector

General overview

Click here to view Table 1

However, by the late 1970s, serious structural defects in the manufacturing sector started to emerge, and the diagnosis was that the sector was characterized by high geographic concentration and high production costs, low value added, serious underutilization of capacity, a high import content in industrial output, and a low level of foreign investment in manufacturing. The situation worsened as the foreign earnings from oil started to decline significantly in the 1980s. By this time, the government had invested heavily in a diversified portfolio of industrial projects, including salt, cement, iron, steel, and sugar. The poor returns from these projects, the low capacity utilization, and various other compounding factors helped to plunge the economy into recession. It is against the background of this poor economy that the government embarked on the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in July 1986. SAP aimed to ameliorate the economic situation, to increase local value added and capacity utilization in the industrial sector, and to create sustainable industrial development.

The elements of SAP included fiscal and monetary restraints and measures to

• diversify the export structure through the encouragement of nonoil exports;

• reduce the import dependence of the economy, especially in the manufacturing sector, by encouraging the local sourcing of raw materials;

• restructure and broaden the production base of the economy and reduce its dependence on the oil sector;

• eliminate administrative controls, especially import licencing, and allow market forces to play a greater role in resource allocation;

• achieve appropriate pricing through removal of subsidies, especially for petroleum products;

• rationalize public enterprises through commercialization and privatization;

• reduce the external debt burden through debt rescheduling and debt–equity swap strategies, as well as encouraging capital inflow;

• correct gross overvaluation of the exchange rate, by setting up a foreign-exchange market; and

• rationalize and restructure the tariff system to assist and promote industrial diversification and enhance industrial growth.

• providing more employment opportunities;

• increasing the export of manufactured goods;

• improving the technological skills and capabilities in the country;

• increasing local content of industrial output;

• attracting foreign capital; and

• increasing private-sector participation in manufacturing.

The Nigerian cement industry

Growth

In 1954, the government convinced the Danish cement-equipment manufacturer, F.L. Smidth, and the firm's British associate, Tinnel Portland Cement Company, to enter a joint venture to build a cement-manufacturing plant in Nigeria. In 1957, the plant was built in Nkalagu, in eastern Nigeria, and the company was named the Nigerian Cement Company (Nigercem). About a month later, APCM, in partnership with the United Africa Company and the Western Nigerian Development Corporation, formed WAPCO. The plant commenced production at Ewekoro in 1959.

A few years after the formation of WAPCO, a clinker plant was set up to grind imported clinker and gypsum. It had an installed capacity of 0.6 × 10⁶ t/year, but closed down within 3 weeks because of a lack of a technical expertise. Between 1963 and 1964, three other grinding and milling plants opened: two at Lagos and one at Koko.

After independence in 1961, federal and regional government participation in industry and manufacturing became more pronounced because it was considered politically expedient to participate in the ownership of industrial enterprises. In 1962, the northern regional government commissioned a German firm, Ferrostahl A.G., to install an integrated cement plant at Sokoto; in 1964, the eastern regional government commissioned a cement plant at Calabar; and in 1965, the midwestern region (now Bendel State) commissioned Continho Caro for the construction of a cement plant at Unkpilla. This pattern continued with the establishment of Ashaka Cement Company and Benue Cement Company. By 1978, there were seven cement-manufacturing companies in Nigeria.

In 1978, at the peak of the oil boom, the federal government went into a joint venture with Benin Republic to build a cement plant at Onigbolo in Benin. The philosophy behind this international collaboration was that some of the cement produced would be sold in Nigeria, which has a large market for it.

Table 2 shows the profile of the industry (and also includes the Onigbolo joint venture with the Benin Republic).

Click here to view Table 2

Employment

All the cement-manufacturing firms in operation in Nigeria were set up with a foreign technical partner. These partners furnished the initial expertise needed for operations, so the proportion of expatriate personnel in most of the cement companies was initially high. However, with the implementation of the Nigeria Enterprises Promotion Decrees of 1972 and 1977 and determined efforts to train Nigerians, the cement industry now has many Nigerians in its management and professional cadres.

The present estimated number of staff at the seven firms in the cement industry is 9000. About 10% of these people are in the professional and management categories. The rest are supervisory, clerical, and other junior workers. The expatriate staff constitute about 2% of the total work force.

Input

Nkalagu Cement and Ashaka Cement Company have captive plants dedicated to satisfying their paper-bag needs. However, the Nigerian Paper Mill in Jebba is the main supplier. The bag manufacturers have a total installed capacity of 230 × 10⁶ bags per annum, and the seven main cement producers require 104 × 10⁶ bags per annum. There is, therefore, an excess capacity of 55% in the bag-manufacturing industry.

Output

Another output of the industry is decorative products, on which WAPCO has monopoly. Portland Paints and Products Division (PPPD) was established in 1972, when WAPCO acquired Cement Paints Nigeria. At inception, the division manufactured only cement-based decorative products, known as Snowcem, Cemwash, and Color-crete. Between 1974 and 1979, Sandtex products, manufactured in the United Kingdom by BCI, were introduced by PPPD. In 1980, the division commenced the local manufacture (under licence) of Sandtex trowel, Sandtex matt, and Sandtex textured. Other PPPD products has introduced to the Nigerian market include a roller-textured decorative coating (Bluetex) and a high-quality emulsion paint (vinyl matt emulsion).

Click here to view Table 3

Accumulation of technological capabilities at WAPCO

The work force at WAPCO is about 2500 (including staff for training schools and repair shops); 21 of these workers are expatriates.

WAPCO commissioned its second plant, at Shagamu, in 1978, and expanded it in 1981/82. At commissioning, it was a two-kiln plant with a capacity to produce 0.65 × 10⁶ t/year. In 1986, it achieved a record of 1 × 10⁶ t using the wet process. The present total installed capacity of the Shagamu and Ewekoro works is 1.69 × 10⁶ t/year, and actual production is about 1.5 × 10⁶ t/year. This represents about 50% of the total cement produced in Nigeria.

WAPCO has plans for plant extension, to be phased in over the next 10 years, depending on how the national economy performs. One plan is to add another kiln at Shagamu Works, thus increasing capacity by 0.45 × 10⁶ t/year. It is meant to generate funds for the redevelopment of the nearly obsolete Ewekoro Works.

Table 4 shows WAPCO's turnover and profits between 1979 and 1988.

Click here to view Table 4

Besides PPPD, which manufactures special decorative products, WAPCO has the Portland Electrical Repairs Division (PERD), which provides electrical repair services like repairing, rewinding, and refurbishing electrical motors, transformers, and alternators.

Technical management

At the plant level, the chief executive is a general works manager (GWM). At the time of this report, the two GWMs were Nigerians. The GWM is invariably a chemical engineer with about 10 years' experience in cement manufacturing, partly spent working or training at BCI cement plants in the United Kingdom, usually rising through the ranks of management and becoming versed in the intricacies of WAPCO operations. The GWM is mostly devoted to long-range planning and reports directly to the deputy managing director, who is an expatriate. Reporting to the GWM is the deputy general works manager, who handles the coordination of plant administration, personnel, accounting, stores and purchasing, etc., on behalf of the GWM.

There is usually a daily meeting of the technical management team, which consists of the department heads. At these, meetings, usually chaired by the GWM, the constraints and problems are discussed. At this level, and also at the technical director's level, the various development and refurbishment projects are identified. When projects have been identified, managers consider various factors to determine the projects' order of priority, almost invariably using a critical path analysis. A project team is then established, and a project leader is appointed to direct and coordinate the project. The role of the project leader can go either to a Nigerian or to an expatriate. The project leader has the power to draw from the personnel and use available skills at the works to successfully complete the project. The project leader also arranges for the procurement of the spare parts needed for the project. Table 5 depicts the level of Nigerian involvement.

Click here to view Table 5

Improvement of imported technology

Ewekoro Works is one of the oldest successfully operating cement works in the world. Because of its obsolescence, it has a high maintenance-demand factor and a more complex mix of machinery and equipment than its sister works at Shagamu. It has a complete quarry unit; five 12 HP raw mills (1 HP = about 745 W); five cement mills; a set of silos for ground clinker and cement; a filter press for the two semiwet kilns; and three kilns.

Over the years, Ewekoro has had many improvement and refurbishment projects: rebuilding of the grate cooler structure; conversion of the long wet kiln to the semiwet process by the introduction of the filter press unit and the Lepol grate; refurbishment of the electrostatic precipitator unit to reduce dust loss and improve the environment; complete change of the chain system in the kiln; civil engineering works on the preheater system; and repairs and refurbishment of the back-end kiln-seal system.

Shagamu Works was designed with the benefit of the experience gained at Ewekoro and is newer and more robust. It also is less complex; it has a big quarry; two big crushers (for rocks); three raw mills (3000 HP each); two wet kilns (60 t/h each); two cement mills (each with 3000 HP and a cement capacity of 100 t/h); and two cement-packing units (about 100 t/h).

The major refurbishment projects at Shagamu include the improvement of fuel-consumption efficiency; and dust insufflation to minimize dust-loss problems.

Case 1: Improvement to the Davies preheater system: At commissioning, Ewekoro Works consisted of three long kilns using the wet process. However, in the late 1970s, a conversion of the works was carried out so that two of the kilns could use the semiwet process. Concomitant with this conversion was a change in the process technology. The slurry is now subjected to further processing before it is let into the kiln proper. The slurry is first filtered in a reactor, where the moisture content of the slurry is drastically reduced. The slurry exits from the filter in a cake form. The cake material then passes to the nodulizer, which is essentially a horizontal plate rotating and vibrating on its axis. The effect of the movement of the nodulizer is to turn the cake into neat spherical balls.

The nodules then pass to the Davies preheater, where, as the name implies, they are preheated before they pass into the kiln. Passing the nodules through the Davies preheater reduces energy consumption. In the Davies preheater, nearly all the moisture in the nodules evaporates before they go into the kiln, where calcination takes place to produce the cement clinker.

The Davies preheater is a patented technology, introduced to WAPCO by BCI. It consists of three main parts: the dome, the bowl, and the floor. Surrounding the floor are two slanting coaxial cylinders. The outer one (the bowl) is mounted to a stationary, rigid steel frame so that it can rotate independently on its axis, which is a shaft connected to a bearing arrangement at the top. At the bottom of the dome there is space above the floor to give clearance.

These cylinders (i.e., the bowl and the dome) are sealed at the outer and inner edges with an annular top cover and hood, respectively, which confine the nodules between the cylinders but leave open to the atmosphere the upper side of a roof that spans and closes the dome. The underside of the roof slopes upward and inward and remains static. It has an inlet through which the nodules are fed and an outlet for exhausting gas.

The dome, bowl, and floor rotate independently about their respective axes. Only the floor is power driven, and this is by an auxiliary motor. There are no mechanical links between the bowl, dome, or floor. The rotation of the bowl and dome is due to the friction of the nodules. The nodules move through the annulus to the floor chamber and then exit into the front end of the kiln. Going counter to the flow of the nodules is hot air from the kiln, which preheats the nodules while they are in the preheater.

Water seals are used to keep the whole arrangement air tight. There are three water seals: the bottom seal and the inner and outer top seals. However, after the preheater was in operation for some time at Ewekoro, problems were encountered. There were leaks in the top seals, allowing water into the nodules. Furthermore, the water leakage caused frequent seizures of the whole unit.

A project team, set up to study the problem, came up with a solution: converting the wet seal to a dry seal at the top level. The seal chamber was given a heat-resistant rubber–teflon seal. A spring was also mounted so that the constant motion of the parts helped to reinforce the seal. This solution was arrived at after much experimentation.

Case 2: Improvement to the cooler-drive system: The clinker exits at the back end of the kiln at a temperature of > 200°C. In this state, it cannot be fed into the mills for grinding. A cooler is, therefore, incorporated at the end of the kiln. In the original cooler assembly at Ewekoro, the cooler drive is mounted at the front end. The power to drive the cooler is transmitted via a V-belt pulley to a gear box, then to the drive shaft of the cooler. Thus, the drive is eccentric to the cooler. However, it the machinery and components were too compact, making access for maintenance very difficult.

In 1985, the staff improved this unit by mounting the drive on the side. This arrangement was similar to the original, but the drive was mounted at the centre of the moving frame of the cooler, rather than being eccentric.

Case 3: Improvement to the cement-milling system: After cooling, the next unit operation in cement manufacture is milling. At this stage, the clinker, dosed with gypsum, enters the mill, where it is ground. Cement emerges at the end of this operation. The milled material is sent to the separator, where it is discharged onto a vibrating, electrically controlled screen. Coarse rejects fall off the surface of the screen, and the fine dust is sent to the silos for storage. The pumping unit, submerged in a pit, pumps the cement up against gravity to the silos. The vibrating screen is also at underground level, in the pump pit. However, water logging of the pit, especially during rainy seasons, hampered production and made maintenance more difficult.

The screening mechanization is now a mechanically driven rotary screen, which rotates at the same speed as the mill. As well, the pump was brought up to ground level, eliminating all the problems.

Diffusion of technology

By the time Shagamu came on stream, in 1979, a core of Nigerian engineers had emerged with experience gained in operating the old Ewekoro Works. The engineers had also been seconded to similar cement works in the United Kingdom for training in daily-routine management.

Nigerians were still not involved in the core of technological activities, but they were involved at the plant or works level after commissioning of the plants, in other words, at the level of production capability. In this phase, a considerable amount of technical change occurred. The Ewekoro conversion and most of the cases discussed above demonstrate this.

A degree of diffusion of technology took place. This was not dictated by a conscious or deliberate effort to acquire technology but by market forces. In 1972, WAPCO established the PPPD to manufacture cement-based decorative products. The division was incorporated in 1985 as a limited liability company. The technological capability acquired within WAPCO was diffused to the host economy in the form of the know-how at PPPD. The general manager of PPPD is a Nigerian, as is a large percentage of its work force.

PERD was established in 1982. The creation of the division was motivated by the need to conserve foreign exchange and by the dearth of electrical repair services in the host economy. PERD has grown to such an extent that it now offers its services to the local petroleum, steel, and brewing industries. The division will soon commission its compressor-motor rewinding and testing workshop, which will specialize in refurbishing burnt-out hermetically sealed compressor motors for air conditioners, refrigerators, and freezers. PERD now has the capacity to rewind and repair large motors ranging from 3.3 to 11 kV. The division has satellite workshops at Warri to cater to the eastern market and at Kaduna to cater to the northern market. One workshop of the division is now managed successfully by a Nigerian.

SAP has generated some corporate responses from the OPC industry, which diffuses technology in the host economy. In WAPCO's case, such responses have included local machining, casting, and fabrication of spare parts.

WAPCO has some interaction with local universities, which provide consultancy services, environmental-impact assessment studies, energy audits, and so on. The WAPCO offices and works, for their part, provide industrial training for management and engineering undergraduates. Lecturers from Nigerian universities sometimes spend their sabbatical leave at WAPCO because it is a corporate member of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers.

Training and development of human resources

With the opening of the second works, at Shagamu, the need to increase the number of trained personnel and the scope of training became apparent. The activities of the Training Centre, therefore, had to be expanded. In 1971, the first apprentices were admitted from forms III and IV of secondary school to undergo a 4 year program in the relevant trades.

With the high labour turnover, the company had to substantially increase its apprenticeship intake, from about 12 people to 24, and it established a department to train and develop staff.

In 1978, as an experiment, the company took on some production trainees. The initial intake of six candidates had credits in chemistry, mathematics, and English. The experiment was extremely successful, and some of these people now hold very responsible positions at the company.

Analysis of results

Microlevel

One method for assessing the diffusion of an imported technology is to examine the linkages between the technology and the local economy. A major raw material in cement manufacture is gypsum, and BCO imports the mineral into Nigeria for WAPCO, despite reported occurrences of the mineral in Nigeria. Claims have been made that the local gypsum is of inferior quality and that the local deposit is not commercially exploitable. These claims have yet to be proven with surveys and reports. It seems that WAPCO and, indeed, the cement industry in Nigeria, do not use the local gypsum because there is no enabling environment to encourage them to do so. In other areas of diffusion, WAPCO has scored well, particularly in the diversification into decorative products. The multiplier effect of this move was obvious, and such a venture was unique in the Nigeria cement industry.

WAPCO's technical training program for lower and middle management is a step in the right direction. In fact, the training and development of human resources could be partly responsible for the measure of success achieved at WAPCO. However, the company cannot really claim to have the technical capability to carry out investments in new projects to create new units of production without the assistance of BCI.

The seeds for achieving this capability are present in the Training Centre and the orientation of management toward problem solving, but these initiatives need to be consciously strengthened to achieve the objective of complete technological capability. The interviews, especially those conducted at BCI's R&D Division in Kent, revealed that BCI is willing to help WAPCO achieve this objective. Indeed, BCI would encourage this to ensure it receives its dividends from WAPCO.

Macrolevel

The federal government formulates policies to encourage optimal performance of the industry and the R&D institutions and makes plans for setting up industrial firms and funding universities, but it fails to create a dynamic link between all those responsible for technological-capability accumulation. No aspect of policy addresses the ways industrial firms develop and accumulate their own technological capabilities or use R&D results to solve specific industrial problems and select, manage, and assimilate imported technology. This was very evident from the case of WAPCO: technical changes at the WAPCO works were really dictated by the profit motive, and there was hardly any awareness of the government's S&T policy in WAPCO's day-to-day activities. WAPCO has no incentive to develop technological capacity.

Recommendations

1. Government should develop an incentive system to encourage entrepreneurs to invest in more foundries, forges, machine shops, etc., as these provide inputs to large firms and are the "missing link" in the Nigerian industrial sector.

2. The government and the cement manufacturers should together make efforts to establish local sourcing of gypsum.

3. The Training Centre at WAPCO should be used as a model for other training centres in the Nigerian industrial sector.

4. Government should provide a dynamic link between national R&D institutions and industry, thus ensuring a sustained generation of technical change.

5. Government should realize the close relationship between its industrial-development policies and its S&T policies. Closer ties should be forced between the various national S&T institutions and those concerned with industrial development.

Document(s) 19 of 29