rlg Communications
How to build an
African brand for a global market
Accra based rlg Communications is offering lessons on how
indigenous ICT companies can open sustainable pathway to ensuring
Africa’s presence in the global ICT industry. SEGUN ORUAME writes
from Accra after a tour of its factory.
The conventional image of Africa in a typical western media is that
of a continent lying prostrate; wracked by famine, wars and hunger.
The west paints a landscape of a huge population of uneducated and
unemployed youths. But that image, extremely strong in the 80s, is
fast eroding in the 20s, and giving way to a continent slowly but
gradually embracing a new economic fillip. One of the companies
driving that change is rlg Communications. The Osu, Accra based
computer and handset manufacturer is modeled to generate mass
high-skill employment for thousands of African youths and meet the
rising demands for computers and other devices.
The rlg Communications opened shop in 2004 but it was not until 2008
that its first brand of mobile phones were unveiled and launched
into the market. That launch would officially mark its forage into
Ghana’s bustling ICT market where mobile phone subscription is
tipping over 20 million. “The market potential is great,” says rlg
chief architect and chairman Roland Agambire.
“But governments must be a major driver of exploring the existing
potential through clear and strong support for local entrepreneurs
that have designed their business on achieving some of the key
objectives of governments for economic transformation: employment
generation and local production of goods including hi-tech
products,” argues Agambire in rlg’s Osu factory where more than 300
Ghanaian youths are gainfully employed to produce the rlg brand of
handsets and laptops.
Ultimately, rlg Communications targets employing 30,000 youths in
one of the most ambitious recruitment drive and capacity building on
the continent. They will be working at the rlg manufacturing
assembly plant as production gathers steam and market penetration
expands in the months ahead. The factory currently run shifts to
keep up with production targets, says Products Development Manager
of rlg Communications, Mr. Aweisu Yakubu. Even then, with demands
growing rapidly and the factory needing more space to up production,
non-factory departments will be moving out of the Osu-Accra building
soon to make room for just the plant section, says Plant Engineer,
Isaac Okine who recently joined rlg Communications from Nokia in
Europe. He beefs up the technical team of rlg Communications which
already boasts of some of the continent’s best hands with vast
experiences in the biggest brands on the globe.
Outside its Osu –Accra head office, rlg Communications has branch
offices in all of Ghana’s ten regions where it seeks to consolidates
on its market acceptance for the rlg brand. Each branch has a
minimum of eight and a maximum of 16 sales and service centers which
are all managed by trainees of the regional training institutions to
give it a greater edge than all other brands seeking to up their
margins in the Ghanaian market.
But it is in nearby Nigeria that the rlg brand is fast working to
create a pan-African brand. With its large market and expansive
appetite for technology products, Nigeria holds great prospect for
rlg that it is not overlooking. It has already sealed a deal in The
Gambia, another ECOWAS family member to foster the brand round its
founding theme of building local capacity and creating more
affordable products that could compete with other global brands.
It’s Nigerian presence will see it partnering with some of the state
governments to train thousands in hi-tech skills and rollout
computers and mobile devices from locally sited factories. It
already has inked a deal with the Osun State government in
south-west Nigeria.
rlg Communications was founded over a decade ago entirely on
building local capacity first and then using the skill subsets to
drive indigenously owned technology factories. That model has worked
for both rlg Communications and the Ghanaian government. The
ultimate beneficiaries are thousands of youths that have acquired
the skill to either work in the factory or to run their own
enterprise in the production chain as marketing or technical
services providers.
The company regularly undertakes training in sale and repair of
mobile phones targeting the youth in all of its branches across
Ghana the as part of its contractual agreement with the Ghanaian
government as the sole implementer of the ICT Module of the National
Youth Employment programme (NYEP) financed by the Ministry of
Manpower Youth and Employment and its partners. The project is aimed
at training the youth in mobile phone repairs and servicing with the
key objective of equipping the unemployed youth with employable
skills in mobile phone repairs, managerial and marketing skills that
will guarantee financial freedom. It was initiated in 2008 as part
of the overall scheme to reduce the nation al statistics on
unemployment and improve local content in ICT. About 30,000 youth
have already benefitted since the programme was initiated.
The Public Private Partnership (PPP) has, in turn, positioned rlg
Communications to be government’s chief partner in realizing the
goals of the Better Ghana Agenda ICT Project designed to increase
the integration of ICT into Ghana’s national economic life whether
in the education and research sector, public administration
including the civil service and the health sector among others. The
first phase of the project entails the production of about 60, 000
laptops to help drive efficiency in the sectors they are designed to
be deployed.
The project has helped rlg Communications to strengthen its market
value and prove its driving philosophy true: training first and then
the jobs and then the products. As Agambire himself will say, “the
company has fashioned out an integrated and robust exit strategy for
the beneficiary youth under the module that would be engaged as
instructors in the ever-expanding rlg Institute of Technology,
employed as technicians and factory hands on the plant … [or be] set
up at independent sales and service centers in demarcated
territories.”
Agambire thinks rlg Communications’ success story in Ghana has
helped to define a pathway that could significantly opened a new
chapter of growth in how Africa engages to enter the new economic
order. Government must work with the private sector to engineer new
ideas into realistic and achievable goals.
