Previous Next

Over 100 SMEs set for Africa foods, products confab

Over 100 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are expected to exhibit at the African Food and Product Exhibition scheduled to hold in April.

The exhibition which is organized by the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce (NACC) will showcase SMEs across various sectors of the nation’s economy including health, manufacturing, agriculture, telecommunications, oil and gas, energy, renewables, among others.

With the Theme: African Food & Product Exhibition, Actualizing Sustainable Economic Growth, “Think Global, Be Local” is also expected to attract more than 3,000 attendees and participants.

The National President of the Chamber, Dame Adebola Williams who disclosed this at a media briefing in Lagos stated that the only thing that would improve the Nigeria situation especially at this crucial moment is production.

She said: “We need to become more productive and that is part of what we do here as the Chamber of Commerce. We encourage production and we have a committee and so many other committees that look after this aspect of our business.

“When you think global, whatever you are producing, you want to make it to a finished state, not something that is in a semi-state of exportation, we want to make sure that what we are exporting are finished products”.

According to her, that’s the only way that we can derive maximum value from what we export as Nigerians. “It is either to take a cocoa product for example, semi-finished, but if we can finish it up, finish the products and export, we find that we are going to derive and generate more revenue for our members, and for the country as a whole. That is people coming in, investors coming in to the exhibition, finding what is attractive to them, what they are looking for, and making deals with the exhibitors,” she explained.

On food insecurity: Williams said food insecurity was one area that has taken front stage with the Nigerian American Chamber of Commerce adding that every month that Chamber holds a breakfast meetings, where it invites specialists in different areas of interest to the members and they come and talk to them on how to improve their businesses, what and what to do to get better yields of their agric-produce.

There is a lot of work going on there; it's an area we are very interested in. We collaborate with government in this area to ensure that what needs to be done and what value needs to be delivered to our members is attended to, she stated.

The Acting Director-General of the Chamber, Wafai Samuel, while explaining the motive behind the African food and product exhibition said that Nigeria needed to maximise the impact of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA).

According to the Acting Director General, the African foods and product exhibition has been put together to showcase the best of African products from various African countries, and not just Nigeria. We're expecting exhibitors from West Africa, East Africa and most others. We want to see the products that have been put together by these people in Africa and then speak to the world that we are able to measure up with exportation standards.

Also, it's giving the SMEs across the country an opportunity to showcase the best of what they do. “We've been seeing various collaborations with African organisations across the country and across the continent, this is indeed one of the many objectives the chamber has put together to support the SMEs,” she stated.

On how Africa can really take advantage of AFCFTA to really grow the food market, Samuel noted that opportunities like this provide African platforms and SMEs to showcase themselves and then maximise the benefits of AFCFTA. According to her, there are so many exhibitions that are ongoing around Nigeria; however this again is put together by the biggest economy that's Nigeria and America, and a relationship she added could not be taken for granted.

“So when you talk about platforms and opportunities like this, indeed it does correspond to the fact that we are able to showcase what we do to the best of Africa. We're able to export our products to other African countries, we've heard so much about intra-African trade.

Africa needs to trade with itself, so platforms like the Africa foods and products exhibitions gives us, first of all, an opportunity to trade amongst ourselves, trade with each other around Africa, trade intra-Nigeria and then we think about exporting out of Nigeria,” Samuel said.