Desirous of knowing what leading technology company, Canon has in store for the growing African market, WHERE To Print magazine in this tête-à-tête with Mr. Somesh Adukia, Managing Director of Canon Central and North Africa (acronym CCNA) discovers there’s more to Canon than just selling machines. Find out in excerpt below:
WHICH REGION DO YOU COVER IN AFRICA?
Canon Central and North Africa was established in the year 2016 with the sole purpose of enhancing Canon’s presence and visibility across the African continent, excluding the southern region of Africa which is being managed by Canon South Africa.
BRIEFLY LET US KNOW YOUR FOCUS IN THE REGION?
We entered the African markets with an open mindset to first understand and observe the needs of African consumers, along with the activities done by our competitors who entered the marketplace earlier than Canon. Once we had our inputs based on the feedback from the consumers through our channel partners as well as our business partners, we devised our strategy and action plan for developing Canon in African markets.
HOW DO YOU COME ABOUT THE SELECTED AREAS IN AFRICA?
As our geography is quite extensive, with 40 countries across the continent – our first line of focus was targeting some key countries like Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Kenya, and Ivory Coast. These markets were selected as our high priority because of various key demographic and economic factors such as population, GDP growth, and purchasing power.
We established local offices in all these 6 countries and employed local African people as representatives of Canon across all these countries. As of today, we have 60 colleagues working in all these 6 local offices which represents 48% of the total CCNA population.
BRIEFLY TELL US YOUR COMMITMENT TO OUR REGION?
Our commitment to Africa extends beyond business. Through initiatives like the Miraisha Programme, Canon’s Student Development Programme, and Women Who Empower, we are actively contributing to the development of the local community.
We first started to strengthen our distribution network by appointing various distributors across the African region. Through our locally appointed channel account managers, we then started channel penetration and enhancing the visibility of Canon products across the channel. Moreover, we organized various events and trainings to both channel partners as well as system integrators with the sole purpose of spreading awareness and knowledge about Canon’s products and key features.
HOW HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO SERVE OUR REGION – SPECIFICALLY NIGERIA AND WHAT IS YOUR AIM WITHIN THE NEXT 2-3 YEARS?
In countries like Nigeria, we conducted some above the line campaigns, like My Naija; My Canon which was a very famous campaign in the year 2018. This campaign helped us immensely in further raising our brand equity and brand awareness amongst Nigerian consumers. Since service is a very important element for African consumers, we also recruited 7 service providers in Nigeria and opened up 17 Service Centers across the country.
As a result of all these efforts, we are delighted that on a year-to-year basis we have been able to grow in the Nigerian Market by 15% as an average every year. This has also reflected in our market share growth where in categories like DSLR cameras, Laser Colour, Office B&W, Professional Print, and Large Format Printers we have achieved No. 1 Market Share position.
Our midterm plan for the next 3 years from the year 2024 to 2026 is to now focus our energies to enhance our market share position for other prominent categories like Mirrorless Camera, Pro Video, Laser Mono, Inkjet Printers and Office Colour, where presently – we are on No. 2 Market Share position.
We strongly believe that we have the right direction, strategies, and tools in place to achieve No. 1 Market Share position in the above-mentioned categories in the next 3 years.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME
It’s my pleasure.
