Korea-Nigeria Students Tour Kia Nigeria Assembly Plant

Bennett  Oghifo

Kia Nigeria, the leading Korean automotive brand in Nigeria played host to the teenagers from the Korean-Nigeria youth camp at its state-of-the-art multi-billion Naira assembly plant in Isolo, Lagos. The teenage Nigerian students from Hendon College in Abuja had an exclusive tour of the assembly plant and the opportunity to experience what sets Kia apart from other automotive manufacturers. With a capacity to assemble 27,000 vehicles per annum, the students revered the great learning opportunity the tour presented to them to observe the assembling process and see how the auto engineers roll out top-of-the-segment made in Nigeria Kia models that are built to the exact standard of the brand’s global quality.

The Korea-Nigeria Youth Camp is a program sponsored by the Korea-Africa Foundation in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Centre Nigeria and geared towards giving young Nigerian students an experience of Korean cultural and entrepreneurship activities in Nigeria as well as fostering friendly relations between Korea and Nigeria. Visiting the Kia facility for a tour is one of the activities outlined for this year’s camp. The secondary school students were accompanied by 2 of their teachers and 4 staff of the Korean embassy to the assembly plant as part of the activities of the 2022 Korea-Nigeria Youth Camp.

In the course of the tour, the students were driven through the test track on the premises to experience the reliability, sturdy performance, and smooth driving experience of locally assembled Kia cars. In addition to watching employees work together on the assembly line to build vehicles, the students got a firsthand look at how the plant runs its end-to-end assembling process.

“Experiencing the process that surrounds the assembling of the cars was really interesting,” commented Oluwafunmilayo Daniel, one of the teenage students of Hendon College on a tour of the Kia plant. “I had never been in an automotive plant before so I enjoyed seeing how the assembly line works and watching all the car bodies and parts move overhead from one area to the next until you’ve ended up with a full-blown car. 

It was easy for me to identify all the different steps of production as they were happening on the assembly line.”

The youth camp program in tandem with Kia’s corporate socially responsive human development activities for the teeming youth aims to foster global leaders by training young vibrant Nigerians with simulative education tools. The camp will guide participants to apply these skillsets to build a better country. 

The students’ tour is one event choice that aligns with Kia Nigeria’s objective. Speaking at the tour, Olawale Jimoh, Marketing Manager, Kia Nigeria, expressed the company’s excitement to offer secondary school teenage students an inside look at the process of automotive engineering as well as enhance students’ classroom learning with opportunities to observe engineering functions in practice. “The Kia plant has become a force for economic development, creating well-paying jobs, and contributing to the diversification of the nation’s economy. As a brand, we’re proud that we can showcase this development to the young generations and help reinforce their hope in the belief that the country will be an industrial hub in no distant future.”

Keying into the Korea-Nigeria Youth Camp programs that are geared towards giving young Nigerian students an experience of Korean cultural and entrepreneurship activities in Nigeria as well as fostering friendly relations between Korea and Nigeria, Kia Nigeria as the leading Korean brand in the country has further strengthened the ties of the two countries through highly impactful and life-changing empowerment and capacity development programs in partnership with the countries geared towards youth development. One of such program is a tripartite partnership with Kogi State, and Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) to provide youths with state-of-the-art vocational and technical training required to keep them at the same pace as engineers from other parts of the world.

The Korea-Nigeria Youth Camp 2022 sponsored by the Korea-Africa Foundation in collaboration with KCCN kicked off on Tuesday 11th October 2022. For this year, 8 students of Hendon College Karu Abuja who were also awardees at the SAGE Nigeria project 2022 were selected to participate in the program.