The initiatives were aimed at improving Nigeria’s sanitary and phytosanitary compliance and reduce export rejects to the barest minimum.
This was as it revealed that the International Trade Centre had on-boarded 4,800 Nigerian women for the trading programme – SheTrades-supported by the World Bank.
The NEPC Executive Secretary, Nonye Ayeni, confirmed this at a technical meeting on the WTO/STDF implementation held at its headquarters in Abuja.
The WTO Director General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had on Tuesday launched seven trade support programmes initiated by the WTO-ITC to boost the development of Nigeria’s trade and industry standards.
She said the project, which aims to improve Nigeria’s sanitary and phytosanitary compliance to boost the country’s export capacity, will ensure Nigeria taps from the worldwide value of sesame exports and its value chain which amounted to $7.35bn in 2022 and is projected to surge to $9.27bn by 2032.
She also said cowpeas were valued at $7.2bn in 2023, with an anticipated rise to $9.43bn by 2028.
She said, “I am greatly delighted to welcome you all to this event, the WTO/ITC interactive session with the She-trades Nigerian Hub and other key stakeholders as part of sideline activities to mark the launch of WTO/ITC Standards and Trade Development Facility for Sesame and Cowpea.
“I sincerely wish to use this medium to, specially, express our appreciation to Her Excellency, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for keeping to her promise, when she visited the Council in 2021, pledging to support the Council in its quest to mainstream the participation of Women-led businesses in global trade. Today, that promise is now a reality with the launch of the WTO/ITC STDF project 2024.”
Ayeni noted that the objective of the programme was to increase the participation of Nigerian women in global trade and thereby promote gender equality in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No 5.
The NEPC boss said from 2018 till date, about 7,800 women entrepreneurs have been supported to enhance their export operations through the SheTrades Nigeria Hub.
She assured the stakeholders that going forward, NEPC would be generating gender-disaggregated data and mean-streaming women’s participation in international trade through the formation of women-led businesses, digital skills acquisition, certification and facilitating access to finance and markets.
She said, “I am delighted to inform you that since 2016, the NEPC has registered 29,000 exporters and about 4,000 are women-led businesses. In 2017, NEPC launched the Women in Export Development Programme and assigned women desk officers in all its regional and state coordinating offices to provide advisory services for women-led businesses across Nigeria.
“It is worthy to note that the collaboration with the ITC has continued to yield significant results, particularly in the implementation of the Women in Export Development Programme as over 4,800 Nigerian women have so far registered with ITC SheTrades.
“More importantly, from 2018 till date, about 7,800 women entrepreneurs have been supported to enhance their export operations through the SheTrades Nigeria Hub.”
She explained that through collaboration with the public and private sector, the Women in Export Development Programme has recorded some successes in terms of the provision of better trade opportunities for women, engagement with women groups to build better support networks and access to information and resources for women-led MSMEs, knowledge and experience sharing by successful female exporters to provide guidance and mentorship for upcoming women entrepreneurs among others.
In his remarks, the Nigerian Ambassador to the World Trade Organisation, Dr Adamu Abdulhamid, urged the committee on the project of improving sanitary and phytosanitary compliance to boost Nigeria’s export capacity to be supported by stakeholders for successful implementation.
He tasked Nigeria to take the implementation of the programme seriously in order to be able to attract another assistance from the WTO.
“You know what the country is going through in terms of cases of product rejects”, charging NEPC to make the project a success.
