Africa-International Trade & Outward Investment, Western Government Agency for Trade, Investment and Tourism, South Africa has stormed Nigeria in search of business opportunities.
Speaking on behalf of the team in Lagos, Head, WesGRO, Cape Town & Western Cape Trade Promotion, Michael Gamwo, said the team was in Nigeria with the business delegation to promote two-way trade and investment between South Africa and Nigeria.
Gamwo admitted there had been a lot of success stories, which it is hoped was going to inspire both Nigerians and South Africans to understand that with a good partnership, business people could prosper if they could get into joint venture with South Africans and then together they join hands and make use of the opportunity to penetrate the local market using South African technology, know-how and expertise.
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Gamwo advised the South Africans to get in partnership with Nigerian business people. According to him, Nigeria is a big market that could be exploited, adding that the South Africans cannot do it on their own.
“You need to do it in partnership with Nigerians who understand the market because there are so many things to navigate in Nigeria that it’s always difficult to do on your own.
So our approach is to get people to partner for a successful business and that’s why we come here every year. Every year we bring different type of companies from different sectors.
So our focus mostly is agribusiness because Western Cape is the hub of agribusiness in Africa, but we also try to blend with other sectors like manufacturing, like technology, services, ICT, construction, oil and gas services and so on.
So we always try to innovate in terms of the composition of the group, the focus and also how we do this kind of business engagement”, Gamwo explained.
He said the program of coming to Nigeria had been in existence for over 12 years. According to him, every year for the past 12 years the group undertakes a trade mission to Nigeria adding it’s done it in partnership with the Nigeria- South Africa Chamber of Commerce where the group brings a business delegation of 15 or 20 companies and then arrange business partnership, provide a platform for engagement and also do the opposite side. So we will invite Nigerians to come to South Africa, he further added.
“Two months ago we hosted a group of 25 Nigerian business people from Abuja in South Africa and then we arranged the whole program for them. We make it easy for them to get to meet South Africans in their own area of business, so we do a targeted engagement, targeted meetings based on their sector of activity.
So it’s something that we are very unique in doing that is trade and investment promotion from both sides”, Gamwo stated.
On how this business engagement will benefit and improve the economy of both countries, Gamwo explained that “when we take a group of business people from South Africa to Nigeria for instance, when they come here those who are going to get involved in trade, now that benefits South Africa because the job creation will be in South Africa, the economic growth will be in South Africa but now those that are going to invest in Nigeria, because usually the companies that we bring, let’s say half of them end up investing in Nigeria, then the benefit is then for the Nigerian economy because then they will bring in capital in Nigeria, they will use Nigerian labour which is job creation in Nigeria, so it’s a win-win in what we do.
And then on the reverse side when we bring in Nigerians to come and look at the South African market, it also opens their horizon. They come to learn, they look at what are the new innovations in South Africa so that they can also apply it in Nigeria for the benefit of the company and also if they want to come and invest in South Africa, then the repatriation of their capital back to Nigeria and the job creation in South Africa” , Gamwo explained. So it’s always been a win-win and that’s what Africa needs, he added.