Ford Motor Co has announced its intention of expanding operations in Africa, according to a recent press release.

Ford is currently established in South Africa, where 85,000 units are produced each year and sold across 24 other countries in Africa.

The company considers Nigeria as a priority market in sub-Saharan Africa and wants to build an assembly plant in Nigeria that would first begin to assemble Ford Ranger pickup trucks.
The project is being planned in collaboration with the authorised Ford dealer in Nigeria, Coscharis Motors Limited, aiming at establishing a plant with a capacity of assembling up to 5,000 units each year.

It is expected to start by importing parts and components from South Africa to assemble the Ford Ranger in the Ikeja plant next to Lagos by the fourth quarter.
Ford Motor Co. intends to sell the Ford Ranger only in Nigeria to test the market and see how Nigeria develops over time, since there could be the potential of serving the entire West Africa with the Nigerian plant.

The vehicle experts, Carmudi Nigeria, which is also in partnership with Coscharis Motors Ltd, still believes "even though the Nigerian automobile industry has been taken over by used vehicles imported from abroad and the slow growth of vehicle financing in the country to encourage consumers to purchase new vehicles, this project is definitely the right direction for a turnaround in the automobile industry in Nigeria.

"Nigerians are going to benefit heavily from establishment of an assembly plant, since it normally takes about four to six months to make an order from overseas, but having a plant in the country will reduce time of building and delivering orders to approximately one to two months."
The move by Ford has also revealed rumors of other rival car manufacturers like Volkswagen and Kia plans to storm Nigeria too.

Culled from Carmudi.com.ng