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The Air Conditioner as a Product in Nigeria
PRODUCT UNDER REVIEW: The Air conditioner in Nigeria
SITUATION REPORT: Nigeria is full of air conditioners, tested, good-quality air conditioners of various types and sizes, like the Haier Thermocool here below or the LG next to it.
It is natural that the country should be full of air conditioners because it is a super tropical country, with super sunshine all year round, and temperatures reaching up to 45 degrees Centigrade (Celsius) in peak dry season.
There are certain product markets the fake product empire has not penetrated, either because it cannot or is not willing to. I think the air conditioner market is one of them, given that I hardly see anybody in Nigeria complaining of fake air conditioners. Even the imported fairly used ones are robust and last years for the buyers, as long as one is in the hands of good technicians who can take care of the maintenance. The only problem is the CFC factor of old-fashioned air conditioners, which the government is trying to tackle.
BRANDS: The brands are many: Good old National is the number one brand Nigerians used to buy because they said it was reliable. Then there was Carrier. These two were very common in Nigeria, but not anymore. The only National and Carrier air conditioners I have seen in Nigeria for a long time are imported used ones. New school has taken over: Sony, Phillips, Samsung, LG, the merger of Thermocool with Haier, which gave birth to Haier Thermocool products, including their air conditioners, and a few more new names, like Midea, Hisense and Skyrun. These are the only AC brands you find brand new now. You have them window units as well as split, and they can be found in supermarkets, where they are more expensive, as well as in specialised electronics markets.
PRICES: Check out some AC prices in Nigeria here.
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In Nigeria, and indeed in any country of the world, what daily utility can be described as the product of all them products if not almighty electricity! There, I said it, “almighty”; but let it be clear that I wrote it with the small “a”, in order not to let it forget exactly where it belongs. I say almighty because, in this industrial and scientific age, a country without it is a ‘dead’ country. It is one of the two man-made almighty sine qua non of modern times, without which life today might not be worth living. Read more …
There are certain product markets the fake product empire has not penetrated, either because it cannot or is not willing to. I think the air conditioner market is one of them, given that I hardly see anybody in Nigeria complaining of fake air conditioners. Even the imported fairly used ones are robust and last years for the buyers, as long as one is in the hands of good technicians who can take care of the maintenance. The only problem is the CFC factor of old-fashioned air conditioners, which the government is trying to tackle. Read more …
SITUATION REPORT: There were no computers in Nigeria until around the year 1985, except one or two, mostly of the Amstrad brand, in the hands of experts in the privacy of their homes or offices. Somebody prove me wrong. Office typing and editing were still being done then with the old mechanical or manual typewriter, with its Tippex white correction fluid and magic correction tapes. Then wonders started happening, the typewriter went from manual to electric, with the magical print head turning and spinning and singing as it reproduced the typed text onto the paper line by line. Read more …
SITUATION REPORT: The electric bulb is one of the consumer intensive products unrepentantly exploited by the fake product kingdom in Nigeria. Once upon a time when my father was a very young man and I was a very young boy, electric bulbs lasted more than a year on the ceiling, and they were so strong one could fall from the ceiling to the floor and did not break. Today, the bulbs we have around are so fragile you could accidentally break one like an egg if you don’t hold it like an egg, Read more …
SITUATION REPORT: The electric cable market in Nigeria is big, steady, growing and lucrative. It will continue to grow as long as human population grows because everybody needs electricity, and there is no electricity without the necessary cabling for distribution, not until somebody invents wireless electricity in commercial quantity. Sounds funny but it can happen any day. BRANDS: There are made-in-Nigeria cables as well as imported cables of all types. Read more …
Situation Report: There are many brands of electric fan in Nigeria, all imported, I think, but a friend just told me some brands are assembled in Nigeria. This product does not have many fake types, but I bought a very fake one a few years ago and it did not last six month before it disintegrated. Even at that, I am sure not too many Nigerians are complaining of disappointment from fans they have purchased. That does not mean that some fans do not do a better job than others and, of course, are more expensive. Read more …
The generators, 100% imported, come in all sizes and power ratings, depending on one’s purchasing power. By far the most popular one, the staple generator, if you like, is the smallest and cheapest, nicknamed, … better than my neighbour. The power rates between 650 watts (0.7KVA) and 500,000 watts (500KVA), or more. The petrol generators used to rate between 650 and 7,500 watts maximum, All generators above 7.5KVA in Nigeria used to be diesel based, but very recently, I have seen 10KVA petrol generators on sale. Read more …
SITUATION REPORT: Nigeria is full of fridges and freezers, almost as many as there are households and businesses, because it is a hot tropical country and, therefore, the need to keep things cool and cold and frozen is great indeed. Fridges and freezers of all types we have in Nigeria, like the Haier Thermocool double door refrigerator on the left here below and the LG fridge freezer here on the right. Read more …
The television has been in Nigerian households since its invention. With a population of about 200 million, we guess the country should have more than a hundred million television sets, among households and offices and shops and hotels and public places. The brands are many: Originally – when the technology was the big and bulky Cathode Ray Tube – National and Phillips, as TV brands, were the principal household names in Nigeria. Then, there were the good old German Blaupunkt and Telefunken. Read more …
I will start with one simple product, the torchlight or flashlight, like it is called in many countries. I have in my house a million torchlights I bought over the years. I have them in all types and colours: metal ones, plastic ones, tiger ones, lion ones, panda ones, eagle ones, grey ones, blue ones, green ones, red ones, yellow ones, disposable battery ones, rechargeable-battery ones, you name them, all of them fake or criminally inferior, because, I believe, someone deliberately made them so, to make you and me buy another one, and another and another. Fake, fake, fake, because none of them lasted two weeks without developing a fault. Read more …
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