The Netherlands and Nigerian governments are partnering to train 40 Nigerian entrepreneurs on the “Nigerian Sustainable Shea Programme.”
The Executive Director of Nigeria Export Promotion Council, Dr. Ezra Yakusak during the launch of the programme in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital said the training which will be done by the Netherlands Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing Countries, CBI is aimed at adding value to the production of shea.
“We brought this people from Netherlands, they are going to be here to ensure that these people are trained on how to process their products that is shea and also add value” Dr Yakusak said.
“We are tired of exporting raw commodities, we want to add value, value addition generates employment, brings Industrialisation and add more value to our product.”
He noted that after the training, the trainees will be awarded certifications that will enable them access the International market.
The NEPC boss added that with the training, there would be a 30 to 40 percent increase of the present earnings from the production of shea.
The CBI Netherlands Project Manager, Dorianne Wegen said Nigeria was chosen because there was a need to promote the non-oil sector.
She added that there is a lot of potential in the shea sector.
According to her “We see alot of production but alot of it goes to neighbouring countries, we wonder why, why is Nigeria not able to be one of the top exporting countries of shea?”
“It’s possible you have the product, you have the intelligence, the willingness to do this, think we should work on capacity building through out the value chain”.
Hauwa Abu
