What business can you do in the absence of electricity?

by Felix Okoli , Admin

Unreliable power supply is one of the factors affecting businesses in Nigeria. If you want to run a successful business in Nigeria, you need to think of business you can do with or without NEPA because you should never expect power always. Excuse me using NEPA as they have changed their name to PHCN, but most of us still know them as NEPA or just power holders that are not efficient at supplying electricity.

Here are a couple of businesses or products that thrive in the absence of electricity

-- Rechargeable batteries
- Laptop batteries
- Inverters
- Solar energy products
- Ice block production
- Generator sales, service and repairs
- Farming

-And sales of non-perishable goods

All of the above, except for generator sales and repairs, solar energy products , farming and sales of non-perishable goods, require some form of alternative source of power to run and our president, sometime in the past, in one of his public speech, has told us not to expect reliable steady power for the next 5 years. Going by this , it implies his administration can't guarantee steady power in the nearest future. And so anyone thinking of venturing into any business in Nigeria should put this into consideration and have power as a factor.

If you ask me, I personally prefer the last two business suggestion. But if you would like to venture into buying and selling, make sure you study your market. Find out where to get your goods most cheap and at a relatively short distance to your place of sales to avoid incurring additional cost.

Farming is equally great; not only will it always put food on your table, farm produce are always on demand round the year, but do put into consideration the means of preservation if your produce would be perishable, making the need for steady power supply arise once again. So you might like to concentrate more on cultivating farm produce you can preserve the local way. And which you can make readily available to the market. Also animal farming, livestock.

If you have good capital, go into farming in a massive way. You can get land from friends and relations if you don't have enough land. Also some communities in Nigeria provide community land for people that want to go into large scale farming. Equally your state government can help in this and can also provide tractor and fertilizer at subsidized price. However you can still hire tractor and buy fertilizer from the market.

For generator sales, service and repairs, you can get cheap generators from China or from wholesalers and resale locally, but to add the repair services, you might have to engage a local technician for this and probably have some sort of profit sharing arrangement with him.

There many other businesses one can run without electricity. You are welcome to make suggestions. Post in comments bellow or on facebook further business suggestions you think can be run in the absence of electricity.

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