Kia assembly plant hosts 2022 Korea-Nigeria Youth Camp students

Kia Nigeria has played host to teenagers from the Korean-Nigeria Youth Camp at its state-of-the-art assembly plant in Isolo, Lagos.

A statement from Kia Nigeria said the students from Hendon College, Abuja toured the assembly plant and experienced what set Kia apart from other automotive manufacturers.

With a capacity to assemble 27,000 vehicles per annum, the students reportedly revered the great learning opportunity the tour offered them to observe the assembling process and see how the auto engineers roll out top-of-the-segment Nigeria-made Kia models built to the exact standard of the brand’s global quality.

The Korea-Nigeria Youth Camp is a programme 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, according to the statement, was one of the activities outlined for this year’s camp.

The secondary school students were accompanied by two of their teachers and four staff members of the Korean embassy to the assembly plant.

It stated that 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,” the statement added.

Oluwafunmilayo Daniel, one of the teenage students of Hendon College, was quoted as saying, “Experiencing the process that surrounds the assembling of the cars was really interesting.

“I had never been to 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.”

Kia stated that the youth camp programme aligned with automaker’s corporate socially responsive human development activities for the teeming youth aimed to foster global leaders by training young vibrant Nigerians with simulative education tools.

“The camp will guide participants to apply these skill-sets to build a better country. The students’ tour is one event choice that aligns with Kia Nigeria’s objective,” it stated.

Speaking at the tour, Marketing Manager, Kia Nigeria, Olawale Jimoh, 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,” he said.

According to him, 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 programmes 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 statement noted.

The Korea-Nigeria Youth Camp 2022 was said to be sponsored by the Korea-Africa Foundation in collaboration with KCCN and it kicked off on Tuesday October 11, 2022.

For this year, eight students of Hendon College Karu Abuja who were also awardees at the SAGE Nigeria project 2022 were selected to participate in the programme, according to the auto firm.