NCSP, NACCIMA Move to Unlock SME-Led Industrial Growth

    NCSP, NACCIMA Move to Unlock SME-Led Industrial Growth

The Nigeria–China Strategic Partnership (NCSP) has reaffirmed its commitment to consolidating engagements with the Organized Private Sector while strengthening strategic collaboration to accelerate Nigeria’s industrial expansion. This followed a high-level meeting with the leadership of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), focused on aligning institutional efforts to deepen Nigeria–China economic cooperation and position Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as primary beneficiaries of trade, manufacturing, and investment initiatives.

Director-General of NCSP, Joseph Tegbe, stated that the Partnership was established as a structured coordination platform to drive Nigeria’s strategic economic engagement with China in a disciplined and result-oriented manner. He outlined its core mandates, including oversight of FOCAC-related initiatives, advancement of priority economic initiatives, as well as the facilitation of catalytic industrial projects across priority sectors. He emphasized that the next phase of engagement will prioritize harmonization of ongoing initiatives, stronger inter-agency coordination, and clearer execution frameworks to ensure Nigerian businesses, particularly SMEs benefit more directly and sustainably from bilateral trade and investment initiatives.

The meeting reviewed existing collaborations and investment pipelines, with both parties agreeing on the need to streamline coordination across federal and subnational levels to improve policy coherence, enhance implementation efficiency and eliminate fragmentation to take advantage of scale. Mr. Tegbe further highlighted the strategic importance of leveraging landmark trade instruments like China’s Zero-Tariff Agreement with African countries as a pathway to scale-up domestic manufacturing, deepen value addition, and strengthen Nigeria’s export competitiveness.

In his remarks, the President of NACCIMA and Chairman of the Organized Private Sector of Nigeria (OPSN), Engr. Jani Ibrahim, commended NCSP’s structured engagement model and its deliberate focus on SMEs as drivers of inclusive industrial growth. He reaffirmed the readiness of the organized private sector to collaborate closely with NCSP in mobilizing enterprises, providing structured policy feedback, and ensuring measurable enterprise-level outcomes from Nigeria–China economic engagements.

Both sides identified practical pathways to integrate SMEs into manufacturing value chains linked to Chinese partnerships; expand agro-processing and value-added production; strengthen technical and vocational education collaborations to close industrial skills gaps; and promote the development of geo-cluster industrial parks capable of anchoring regional manufacturing ecosystems. They agreed to establish a formal working interface to translate strategic alignment into measurable results, with defined focus areas including investment facilitation, SME capacity development, industrial cluster formation, and export-oriented growth.

The meeting underscores NCSP’s resolve to convert diplomatic goodwill into tangible economic gains, expand opportunities for Nigerian businesses and strengthen productive capacity, leveraging NACCIMA’s network. This aligns with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which seeks to achieve sustained and inclusive growth anchored on industrial productivity and private-sector dynamism.