Africa yet to access 50% of the value chain opportunities in welding and materials joining —Executive Director The Welding Federation Ayo Adeniyi

Ayo Adeniyi is the Executive Director of the Welding Federation (TWF), he has over two decades of professional leadership experience across welding production management, management system implementation and welding competency management, among others. Ayo is a Fellow of the Nigerian Corrosion Association and International Institute of Management Consultants. His expertise is principally in Total Welding Quality Management (TWQM). A technology ambassador, he has presented papers and provided welding competency advisory and consultancy services across different countries in Africa. He has also provided ISO 3834 consulting services to a number of leading companies across Africa. In this interview with Oke Peter, he speaks on the prospects of the welding profession in Africa. Excerpts

Can you please share with us how The Welding Federation Africa is adding value to the material joining technology in Africa?

To understand what values TWF is adding to welding and materials joining technology in Africa, it is essential to understand and make reference to the purpose of TWF as an entity. The summary of the purpose of TWF is to establish and sustain systems across Africa to enhance capacities to increase value creation, and capturing from welding and materials joining activities in Africa.

This implies unbundling the complexities of the industry and developing solutions that address the real challenges. Currently, there is an increasing awareness like never before of the full scope of values associated with welding and materials joining in Africa. This increasing awareness is being balanced with a desire and commitment to advance beyond participation to management of the full value chain opportunities in the industry.

TWF has successfully established national systems across several countries where there were none and also collaborated with others where there are. In addition to the establishment of national systems across different African countries, TWF has successfully developed syllabuses through its extensive collection of globally acknowledged experts across different committees, councils and boards to end the external benchmark of skills in Africa and the cost that is associated.
Thanks to the extensive collection of experts, some of the syllabuses already fully developed and being deployed are the TWF Integrated Welder Qualification and Certification Scheme, the Africa Occupational Standard for Coded Welder Development, the TWF Integrated Fitter Qualification Scheme and the TWF Welding Inspection Certification Scheme. The implementation of these schemes by any country has the potential to increase a deeper level of values generated from welding in their country and also ensure those values are captured nationally. It’s time to plug the channels of losses in Africa.

Perhaps more important is the growing confidence that TWF has awakened that it can be done and it is being done.

As an organization committed to improving welding capacity within the African region, what are you doing to ensure that young people are encouraged to go into the Welding profession?

TWF as an apex professional body for advancing the knowledge of welding application science in Africa is committed to a sustainable change narrative. This is the driver behind two key organs within the management structure.

TWF Network Body on education and research caters to the building of experts to manage Africa’s welding and materials joining industries into the next decades and centuries ahead through a steady commitment to the development of education driven by its ten-year research plan.

Deploying the TWF Webinar Series on Welding Education, Research and Workforce Development, the TWF network on education and research activities educates and regularly updates the knowledge of both emerging and practicing professionals, as well as mentors young professionals in the profession across Africa.

TWF also runs a Future Experts Network for students and fresh graduates to interact amongst themselves and challenge frontliners in the profession with burning questions on technicalities, policies or innovations in the application and advancement of welding and materials joining technologies in Africa. On this table, young professionals have access to a council of mentors across Africa and in the diaspora.
We call on students across higher institutions in Africa to visit the TWF website and form local network chapters of the TWF Future Experts Network. It gives room to the biggest table of mentors in the profession unimaginable.

Your organization encourages capacity development in welding technology and its optimization through equitable access to verified technical information, and experience sharing integration of research and development activities. How do you think this has contributed to the development of the welding business in Africa?

Africa cannot continue on its current trajectory. It will crash. The grand vision is to fix the frictions limiting the optimization of opportunities resident in Africa’s manufacturing industries for socioeconomic development the and creation of employment opportunities through ethical practices. Optimizing value chain benefits associated with Africa’s manufacturing industries is now a sacrosanct quest.

In the face of rising unemployment, socioeconomic instability and crisis, Africa needs industry solutions that are primarily driven by the interest of Africa, not Africa as an addendum to a western or eastern agenda. In TWF, we recognize and are also affected by the inefficiencies that have either crippled or stagnated growth in Africa’s manufacturing industries. These issues have continuously been a basis for underperformance.

The combination of our experiences and exposure to the realities of our shortcomings equip us with adequate motivation to create solutions that reduce the cost of industry solutions, cost of personnel development, connectivity to employment through the integration of commercial activities and stirring of local startup firms to feed value chain opportunities. The key is to change the narrative to grow African content to adequately and equally complement international content.

TWF is boldly calling on all African countries to adopt and strictly implement the skilling map proposed by TWF as one of the several layers of solutions that TWF has already deployed to affect the ownership system for Africa’s low and low-level welding manpower, with the complement of other schemes which it onboards with validated benefit to Africans e.g., TWF-CWB Automotive repair Welding Technician and TWF Automotive Boiler Welder Schemes

TWF integrated personnel empower African and Africans way with the real capacity for growth in multiple dimensions. Within the bracket, TWF hopes to become the reliable system that effectively addresses human and industry capacity development needs across Africa’s welding industry, uniquely as an African body.

In the long run, the TWF platform will sustain the organized exchange of scientific and technical information, as well as provide an environment to encourage and sustain the transfer of knowledge and technology through adaptive and innovative research in Africa. It will celebrate contributions by Africans to developments in the science and technology of materials joining, while modifying processes for implementation and commercialization of innovative findings.

What do you think are the challenges hindering the advancement of science and the application of welding materials in Africa?

There is a need to identify the failures before reviewing the challenges either initiating the failures or nursing them. The key failure point is that Africans are yet to access even 50% of the value chain opportunities in welding and materials joining despite the volume of welding activities in Africa.

One of the biggest challenges responsible for either initiating or sustaining the failures in Africa’s welding industries is poor regulation. The deployment of regulatory frameworks is mostly laced with interests than the national economy. The lack of a proper regulatory climate stiffens the atmosphere of professionalism and chokes innovations. Africans mainly invest in the capacity to participate in the industry, not the capacity to own the solutions deployed in the industry.

This is why I keep insisting that the word capacity development has been abused. It is somewhat of a veil that steadily distracts Africans from the bigger picture. You can build skills and still lack beyond measures in the industry.

The key to the industry for Africa is in owning either whole or part of the industry solutions. The summary of TWF activities is developing professional systems and structures that aid ownership of market-driven solutions for African industries. This is what TWF is engineering across Africa. The capacity to own the solutions.

As a ‘not for profit’ organization, how have you been running the affairs of the organization considering the current economic realities?

In the professional cycle, the emergence of TWF has been hailed as one of the most innovative events in Africa in recent times. Quite a lot has been built with very minimal funds in its capacity. Africans and Africans sit at the heart of TWF activities. From its globally accepted syllabuses in welding personnel development to aid skill mobility across Africa, through its 10 years of research roadmap that aims to develop local content solutions and stir an increasing number of start-ups in the vast opportunities chain, beyond the regular welder skill development, TWF has built a lot to the benefit of Africa’s industries and economies. TWF however lacks the funds to do all or deploy all the solutions it has created.

TWF is therefore calling out to Africa’s leading local content champions like Afrexim Bank, African Development Bank, African Energy Bank, Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board, Petroleum Authority Uganda, Petroleum Commission Ghana, Local Content Authority Senegal, all regulatory bodies and national oil companies to partner with TWF and its national organs with necessary funds to increase the values created and captured from welding and materials joining activities in each national space across Africa’s energy, oil and gas and defense industries.

The experts are available, the solutions have been created, and the system has been built but the funds are grossly not available and TWF is open to partnering with governments and investors to show a clear path on what and how to access deeper levels of values from the industries.

Do you think you are doing enough to ensure that uneducated welders are getting the necessary education, training, qualification and certification that can make them compete with their colleagues in developed countries?

We are doing more than enough. I can assure you that we have moved beyond the point of whether our welders developed can compete globally, by connecting them with sustainable opportunities where they can display their competitive skills and learn respect.

TWF facilitated the deployment of about 100 welders and associated personnel to the Middle East in 2024. They have been there for over six months now and the feedback we get is that they are in the very distant lead in terms of productivity. The records are in the open and verifiable. I can therefore assert with utmost confidence that the combination of African occupational standards welder development and TWF integrated welder qualification and certification scheme are two game changers that are set to address the totality of welders’ skill development in Africa. TWF understands clearly where Africa needs assistance and it has extended its arm of friendship to sister organizations in those areas.

We call on all African countries to adopt the TWF Skill Map and Certification Systems and implement it nationally. It is a data-driven template with guarantees of impact in terms of employment creation and mobility.

For huge investors, the ten-year research roadmap also developed to advance value creation from the web of opportunities in welding and technology beyond what Africans are currently focusing on is another critical subject that should be on the table of each regulatory body.

We have our parts as experts and professionals in the practice, but also calling on regulatory bodies across Africa to see the emergence of a new Africa and work closely with the Welding Federation and its networks across each country to successfully change and sustain the new narrative.

What do you think is the cause of quackery in the welding business and what are you doing to ensure that quality standards and competence are not compromised?

You have asked a very sensitive question that needs caution in response in order not to offend some quarters of influence. The easy take when reviewed is to either blame the welders or poor monitoring.

The problem points again to regulatory flaws (mostly abuse of regulation) without mincing words. Capacity development is such an overblown political phrase that incites a lot of attention and expenditure in recent times. Most unsuspecting governments are misled by mostly financial interest partners. Imagine a non-African to be supposedly more burdened about capacity development in Africa than an African. Is this not laughable?

Capacity development in welding and its related practices is such a profitable venture in Africa in recent times, that there seems more interest in the financial business of developing welders or welding personnel than the actual professionalization of developing them. This is the stark reality from surveys, that results in a continuous increase of fly-by-night training institutions.

The business has become so lucrative that every organization wants to assume responsibilities for which they are not professionally equipped both in the present and for the long haul. They do not understand the need for sustained commitment to the highest level of ethics and a proper guideline underwritten by objective involvement, not commercial interests. It is not just about the training but also the fellowshipping with the body of professionals.

National TVET control centers jettison the need to embrace detailed systems developed by industry professionals to guarantee skill development that meets and continually measures the most current code requirements. Rather, they prefer to engage just about anyone or entity, and optionally follow unvalidated procedures because they are comfortable with fewer verification hold points and mostly prefer cheaper alternatives, but with dangerous output.

They confuse and erase the border lines between training and certification by their actions and encourage quackery. They assume that the beginning and end of professionalism is the establishment of training centers. No! It is the spirit, the revelations in the profession that is only given to lifelong commitment to the profession. In most cases, national systems just want to score political points. They are not driven by commitment to best practices and this is where the problem exists. The industry is ruthlessly driven by best practices.

Unfortunately, most programs end up wasting the time and hard-earned or even borrowed financing of sponsors and the students. The result is always guaranteed to be the same, in the absence of immediate rewards the passion and vision have not been passed down or sustained by professional bodies who understand the highs and lows of the profession

In five years to come, where do you think TWF would be?

In another five years, TWF hopes to have powered its solution widely enough to be the primary welding personal and product certification scheme in Africa. Providing a good table for the integration of research data to aid the development of competitive value chain products for Africa’s industries.

You attended the the just-concluded 9th SAIPEC held at Eko Convention Center, Lagos, what do you think are the takeaways of the event?

SAIPEC powered by PETAN has always been a good table where TWf engages the industry in hardline discussions on what it has done, how it is doing and justifying how its solutions complement the interest of the industry. The biggest takeaway should be the increasing galvanization of efforts of Africa’s energy companies to address Africa’s energy poverty and the uniform embrace of the complementary role of TWF in actualizing and sustaining this vision with its range of welding systems and solutions.

SAIPEC 2025 stands out as one of the best for us thus far. We were glad to provide on-ground answers to all technical questions across varying subject matters on welding to interested persons and even on policy issues.

You are preparing for the 3rd Annual Assembly and International Conference of your organization in Addis Ababa come April. What do you think will differentiate this program from the previous ones and what should the participants expect?

The theme of TWF Assembly 2025 Empowering Africa- Strengthening Welding Capacity for Regional Integration and Global Competitiveness is an inspirational call to action that reflects the urgent need for Africa to build robust industrial skills and technical capacities for developing solutions that the industry requires. Welding is a critical skill for almost every industrial sector, including construction, manufacturing, energy, automotive, and mining. As Africa strives for economic integration and seeks stronger global competition, a skilled and mobile welding workforce is foundational to achieving these goals.

Participants should look forward to increasing the number of technical knowledge sharing, a new narrative in terms of the formation of technical collaborations between manufacturers in Africa as against others, an increasing call for investment in research activities as a commercial venture, sub-level continental policy alignments and friendship building.