Nigeria Export Promotion Council Trade Information Portal

In close collaboration with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, we have developed and implemented a Nigerian Trade Information Portal. As part of the Nigeria Country Programme by UNIDO, and funded by the EU, a completely new portal has been launched at the end of 2018.

Products

cocoa, cashew, ginger, sesame, dry beans, leather

Year

2018

Country

Nigeria

Type of activity

  • Coaching
  • Consulting
  • Market Intelligence
  • Trade Intelligence Portals

Year

2018

Country

Nigeria

Type of activity

  • Coaching
  • Consulting
  • Market Intelligence
  • Trade Intelligence Portals
The Nigerian Trade Information Portal consists of two parts:
  • 1) an exporter portal focusing on all relevant info for (potential) Nigerian exporters
  • 2) a buyer portal for (potentially) interested international buyers
The exporter portal provides easy access to:
  • A comprehensive export guide.
  • A dynamic export readiness checker.
  • Market information on priority products (new markets).
  • Trade facilitation information.
  • Relevant news and trade event information.
  • All support services for Nigerian exporters.
The buyer portal presents:
  • A database with validated Nigerian exporters.
  • Information on why to source from Nigeria.
  • Detailed product profiles showcasing Nigeria’s exportable offer to the buyers, including unique value propositions, supply details, seasonality and more.
  • Relevant news and trade event information.
  • All support services for international buyers.
As part of the project, capacity was built within NEPC in areas such as trade information analysis & reporting, portal content development & management, website maintenance, organizational strengthening and sustainably embedding the portal within NEPC. The portal can be visited through https://nepc.gov.ng/.
Exporter Portal NEPC-Globally Cool project

Activities

  • Focus groups and stakeholder sessions held to assess priority needs.
  • Development of functional and graphic design of trade information portal.
  • Project development and intervention design to develop a sustainable online portal focusing on the information needs of Nigerian exporters and international buyers.
  • Content development in close collaboration with an ad-hoc project team at NEPC during numerous workshops and working sessions (between 30 and 50).
  • Technological development of Trade Information Portal for NEPC.
  • Handed over a complete portal with easy-to-update and easy-to-expand possibilities in a user-friendly back-end environment (WordPress).

Results

  • NEPC’s Trade Information Portal developed and launched within one year.
  • New market intelligence services and tools introduced and embedded within the organization.
  • NEPC staff successfully trained and coached on market information development, trade analysis, online communication / research skills / website updates and maintenance.
  • New NEPC service introduced: one pagers with potential new markets for Nigeria (white spot markets) based on growth performance and competitor analysis.
  • Creation and dissemination of short video animations in addition to MI-reports.
  • Export readiness checker online available with self-assessment and dynamic content per exporter.
  • Interactive trade fair performance checkers with referral service online.
How did NEPC experience the project? We asked NEPCs Portal-team manager Estelle Igwe and team member Moboni Luguja. Moboni: “Our skills and knowledge grew enormously during this program, from web writing skills to basic website programming. For me, creating market reports was one of the most enjoyable and insightful things to do. We know how to use different market analysis tools in analysing market potential for Nigerian products now. But at least as important: we learned how to present this properly to exporters. Both by developing one-pager reports and via video animations! I have been working in the council for over six years, but especially during this program, I learned a lot from other teams. Since the first day, we had to really work together as a team. Involving people from all different departments.” Estelle completely agrees and adds: “I appreciated the fact there was a need for collaboration and working as a team. It is always mentioned that we are a team, but during the Portal development we actually really did work together as one full team. This contributed hugely to the success of our new Trade Information Portal.”