Dairy Consultant

[eastfield]

would like your advise on how to go about setting up a consultancy serving the Nigerian dairy industry. I have over 20 years experience in the UK & Ireland with various dairy companies in product development,
laboratory and production environments. Since the dairy industry
In the UK is well established there is room for incremental development. There must be far more opportunity
for growth of a developing country’s dairy industry than a developed nation. What are the facts required and hard questions that need to be answered and how
does one go about setting up a one man band consultancy for the Nigerian dairy market? I will be based in London
and want to do it remotely, contacting relevant parties via e-mail. I am a technical person and not able to advise on
commercial/logistics aspects of growing the dairy business.
I would appreciate your advise.

Eastfield

[gj]

If you are doing this remotely, surely you don't need to limit yourself to just Nigeria?

Graham

[Anonymous]

Be aware that you should travel to get your customers. Once you have a contract, it is possible to do that remotely, but to get customers will be more difficult.

cheers,

[eastfield]

I will most definately have to travel. I am looking at the opp because the industry is a developing one.I am limiting myself to one country firstly because I know from my employer's business that huge sums of money are transacted for our technology/information/production consultancy and secondly as much as I would like to offer my services globally I do not think I am ready for that yet.

[kyber]

Hi Eastfield,

Have you progressed this any?

I used to be IT Director of an Engineering Consultancy firm that did a lot of work in Nigeria. It was, and remains (I understand from friends still there who I have a drink with recently), a very difficult country to do business with.

Assuming you have undertaken some self-development to indentify key differences between the UK and Nigeria markets that do have an impact on the technology (such as environment, maintenance resources, etc.) your primary avenue there is network based. A huge amount of business ther is still won through networking rather than any other commercial activity (much more so than in the UK) so you really need to get this in place before you can start working remotely. You probably need to spend some months out there building your network up. I am told thought that it would be worth you contacting the appropriate department of the Nigerian Government directly through as they are interested in getting skills involved in some of their industries to plug a number of gaps. You will still need to make a personal visit though.

Good luck.

Stuart