Tenaui Africa Moves to Build Partnerships in Nigeria

Vanessa Obioha

As part of its mission to provide imaging and printing office solutions to its teeming market in Nigeria, Tenaui Africa recently partnered CMYK Studios – an indigenous print and market communications company in Lagos. The partnership came barely a year after Tenaui Africa won the bid to be the official distributor of premium photography brand, Canon in Nigeria.

The partnership was announced during a recent three-day exhibition where Tenaui Africa Limited showcased the newest Canon Imagepress C650. Spurred by the growing needs of B2B and industrial sectors in Nigeria, Canon is gradually penetrating the Nigerian market.

Speaking of the partnership, the Chief Executive Officer of CMYK Studios, Dotun Adekunle said the synergy was borne out of the need to offer consumers the best printing solutions. While decrying the waste of paper, Adekunle believes that with an international brand like Canon, Nigeria can achieve a green environment.

“Canon is a global and international brand that comes up with exciting printing solutions not just around printing but around imaging. Imaging is important because we want to reduce the waste that is generated by print, so if you go into imaging where you can scan existing documents and keeping them and accessing them when it’s needed, you don’t have to keep or duplicate so much paper. I think that if industries and large companies can adopt that, there will be a reduction of stack of files in offices everywhere. I’m sure if we push this we can be a green nation,” said Adekunle.

For the Managing Director of Tenaui Africa Limited, Yasser El-Farra the partnership with CMYK Studios was another success story of the company. Having being in the country for over five years, the company is excited about building more relationships with indigenous companies as well as helping international brands penetrate emerging markets in Nigeria and Africa.

“The aim of this partnership is to increase the network. They can have their own customers but we give them support. What is the success story of Tenaui Africa today? What makes us different from other companies is that we did not come here to sell boxes, we came to educate, to teach people how to do business. This is our success story.
“We didn’t come to sell only products but also what you can do with this. Nigeria is a big market so we need partners. We are open to cooperation. No matter what power we have, we can’t cover the whole of Nigeria. So in 2018, we will open the doors for partnership. The market is huge so we are looking forward to increase the network,” said El-Farra.

He also said the company has been able to solidify these relationships due to the ease of doing business in Nigeria.

“We have been here for over five years. The greatest challenge has been bringing in goods but this has become much easier. Frankly, we are looking for more. We understand the challenges here but we are impressed by the speed of changes. We never expected it to be this fast because in the past, it’s been slow.”
While pointing out that Nigeria and Egypt hold over 50 per cent of job opportunities in Africa, El-Farra revealed that the Nigeria markets are changing.

“The markets are changing dramatically and to the positive side. What we saw as challenges in the beginning are now decreasing, especially in terms of infrastructure. We believe tomorrow will be much better. The market is huge and Nigeria has the biggest resource, which is manpower. If you look at the worldwide economy, the fastest is still in Africa. This has enabled a lot of cooperation in Africa and we know the growth will exceed China. With the proper infrastructure and safety measures, Nigeria can attract more investors.”

Regarding how Canon is faring in the Nigeria business landscape, the managing director said that the photography brand is very happy with the Nigerian environment and that they are looking forward to expand their business. The company announced that it will open a new Canon branch in Abuja soon.