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Agricultural Competitiveness
Strategic Objective 2: Enhance the competitiveness of targeted agriculture value chains for smallholder farmers, small, medium, and large agribusiness enterprise.
Strategic Outcome 2: Enterprise upgrading in agribusiness promoted; increased firm- level/cluster production and sales; innovative technologies enhanced; increased productivity; and sector governance developed.
NABG will seek to promote and improve agribusinesses abilities to expand their business operations, increase productivity and create jobs by working in partnership with the private sector to achieve sustainable economic growth. NABG will provide technical assistance and capacity strengthening to agro-businesses to 20
produce, process, and sell high-quality goods to meet market demands as well as ensure that they can scale up and contribute to Nigeria’s economic transformation.
The holistic firm-level support will be organized around two strategic areas: (a) helping firms build capabilities and customer base in existing product or service segments, and (b) repositioning firms or clusters to move to higher value-added segments.
Focus area.
This strategic outcome contributes to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 8, 9, and 12 and focuses on
improving private sector productivity, profitability, and competitiveness through market-based approaches.
NABG’s will integrate both the demand and supply sides mind-set in its technical support provision. On the demand side, focus will be on creating market linkages and facilitating communication of market expectations to firms/clusters, and on the supply side, on supporting firms in implementing improvements in managerial and production practices to meet market expectations.
Expected Output
Three outputs will contribute to strategic outcome 2 namely:
1. Standards for agricultural commodities document developed.
2. Training for national, state, and local actors for implementation and enforcement standard and ratings for agricultural conducted.
3. Partnership with relevant National regulatory organizations such as Nigerian Export and Import Bank (NEXIM), Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC), NAFDAC, SON, among others established.
Key activity: Build core competencies of agribusinesses in business entrepreneurship, business diagnostics, and management skills development.
To achieve the key activity, NABG will provide access to skills and technical assistance as follows:
1. Provide training on business entrepreneurship, business diagnostics, and management skills development.
The training will be structured as follows:
Component 1: Core Competency Training
An initial core competency training of SME owners/managers will serve as the basis of all other components. The training will target each year at least 100 MSMEs including farmer cooperatives with growth potential. The beneficiaries will be identified through three (3) sources:
(i) a call for expression of interests advertised in the local media, (ii) large anchor companies for the linkage program, and (iii) business associations. All potential beneficiaries will fill a questionnaire designed to assess their support needs and growth potential. Participants (of which 40% shall be women empowered enterprises) will be involved in entrepreneurship training and will be supported on developing business plans; how to move from merely running a business to building growth-oriented businesses that can be depended upon to deliver international standard products and services.
The Core Competency Training curriculum, will be based on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) model and business EDGE model of International Finance Corporation (IFC), designed to give participants an opportunity to improve critical core business skills: opportunity seeking and initiative; persistence; fulfilling commitments; quality and efficiency; calculated risk taking; goal setting; information seeking; systematic planning and monitoring; persuasion and networking; independence and self-confidence.
Component 2: Business Diagnostics and Coaching
Successful SMEs that have completed the core competency training and have proven growth potential will be selected to receive supplementary support through business diagnostics and coaching to move their production capabilities to standards. The SME Diagnostic Report will review the entire operations of the SME (through consultative workshops and enterprise visits), establishing baseline information, competency gaps and critical areas that need attention to prepare detailed business plans.
Business diagnostics will be conducted for a target of at least 10 agro-SME clusters participating in the core competency training under component 1 SMEs will be clustered for key management skills training including helping them to evaluate and optimize their financing needs and harness the capital that they can access. One-on-one coaching sessions will be given by an industrial expert or through larger companies mentoring.
Component 3: Management Skills Development
Managerial gaps identified in the business diagnostic are addressed in management skills training. This activity will promote SMEs that have: the clearest strategy developed; a clear implementation work plan to achieve the developed strategy outlined in the business plan. Management training will cover the following: Leadership and People management; Delegation of time and conflict management; Customer Care; Operations Management and quality; Working capital/ cash flow management; Procurement and supplier management; Pricing and Profitability; Financial and Operational Reporting; Customer Segmentation and Value Propositions; IT Strategy; Managing Quality in the Small Business; Strategic Leadership; Succession Planning; Bidding for Contracts; Legal implications for bidding for contracts; Planning for Growth, etc.
2. NABG will collaborate on specific commercial opportunities with firms, service providers, research organizations, and other business networks.
3. NABG will guide private sector partners and actors in exploring opportunities in export markets allowing them to increase production, meet quality standards, comply with regulations.
4. NABG to work with relevant agencies such as the Ministry of Trade and Investment, as well as the Standards Organizations of Nigeria (SON), to support the development of a framework standard and ratings for agricultural produce that are critical for the use of quality agricultural products for improved productivity and higher output for farmers.
5. Sensitize and build capacities of national, state and local actors for implementation and enforcement of Commodities National quality law.
6. Identify and partner with relevant National regulatory organizations for the standard formulations.
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