2011-12-08 - The West African Power & Industry Convention (WAPIC) – the only such event for the West African power sector – took place in Abuja, Nigeria from Monday 28 November to Thursday 1 December.
ABB, being a key player in the power sector and looking to increase its presence in Nigeria, was a sponsor, an exhibitor and also a participant in WAPIC seminar.
The convention was officially opened by Minister of Power Bart Nnaji, who spoke on the Nigerian government’s commitment to provide adequate power in the country as its top priority and the first item in the federal government’s 7-point agenda, which forms the basis for the current administration’s developmental strategy. It has been repeated time and time again that there is a direct and indirect link between a county’s economic development and its electric power consumption. Electricity is a key factor to accelerate economic development and is very critical to the attraction and retention of private sector investment in the country.
The convention was in two parts: the seminar and the exhibition.
The seminar:
The seminar was solely for the purpose of addressing key issues faced in Nigeria’s Power Sector, such as boosting investor confidence in the ongoing privatization with an improved regulatory and legal framework, sound banking and financial practices, loss reductions in the distribution network, the Nigerian power sector reform update to achieve the best cost-reflective tariffs, improving the overall utility performance, and most importantly renewable energy.
oooo
The exhibition
oooo
The exhibition hall was filled with booths for different companies who all had their team of experts to attend to potential customers. The ABB team was led by the front end sales manager for Power Products and Power Systems in the Central Africa cluster Nikola Stojanovic and ABB Nigeria sales director Bryan McKenna. With our participation at the seminar we made sure our brand name was on display to the key players in the industry.
The ABB stand was visited by the minister of power who was very interested in our geometric power plant project, and our team is currently following up with him to make sure that we get an offer.
The event in general was a good forum for networking, meetings with utility companies from across west Africa, power sector regulatory bodies, members of the ministry, government organizations, consultants and private sector energy companies all looking to meet the power needs to ensure current industrial growth and development.