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NEPC and Kano’s Push to Unlock the North’s Export Potential
By Kabir ABDULSALAM,
For centuries, Kano has understood the language of trade. Long before phrases such as non-oil exports, value chains and regional integration became part of government policy, merchants in the ancient city were already moving goods across borders, connecting producers to markets and turning commerce into a way of life.
Today, though, that long trading tradition faces a difficult question: why has Kano not yet emerged as one of Nigeria’s leading processing and export hubs?
The answer may not be a shortage of commodities, traders or markets. It may lie somewhere else — in the gap between what Kano produces and what it can process, certify, finance and ultimately place in the global market.
That is why the recent stakeholders’ engagement and Non‑Oil Export Town Hall Meeting by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), under its Executive Director/CEO, Nonye Ayeni, deserves attention.
Rather than seeing Kano as simply another stop on an official engagement, NEPC appears to be treating the city as a strategic gateway into the export economy of the North-West.
And that distinction matters. A trading economy waiting to become an export economy – Kano needs no introduction when it comes to commerce.
For generations, its markets have served as collection points for agricultural commodities produced across the northern belt. Grains, sesame, groundnuts, hibiscus and other products pass through the region in volumes that reflect the depth of its commercial network.
Dawanau, for example, is more than a market. It sits within a much larger chain connecting farmers, aggregators, transporters, traders, processors and buyers.
The bigger question is what happens after those commodities arrive.
Too often, the journey ends with aggregation and onward shipment rather than transformation.
That matters because much of the value in an export commodity is created after it leaves the farm — through cleaning, grading, processing, packaging, certification, branding and access to better-paying markets.
This is where Kano’s trading advantage could become an industrial advantage. It is also where the North’s export opportunity becomes much larger than Kano itself.
Nigeria’s non-oil exports reached a record $6.1 billion in 2025, while export volumes rose to 8.02 million metric tonnes and Nigerian products reached 120 countries.
Those figures are encouraging. But they also point to the opportunity that remains.
The question is no longer simply whether Nigeria can export more. It is whether the country can earn significantly more from the products it already exports.
Sesame offers a useful example. Nigeria has established an international market for the crop, yet a substantial share still leaves the country in relatively raw form. Similar patterns exist across several agricultural commodities.
For Kano and the wider North, that is both a weakness and an opportunity.
The region has farms. It has the traders and aggregation networks. It has access to West and Central African markets.
What it needs is a deeper processing ecosystem that connects these strengths. That is the export gap.
This helps explain why Kano has become important in NEPC’s wider engagement strategy.
Under Ayeni, the Council has increasingly emphasised that export development cannot be driven from Abuja alone. Its engagement across the six geopolitical zones reflects the economic realities and opportunities of each region.
Kano is particularly important because the North-West combines a large agricultural base with established commodity markets, processing potential and long-standing cross-border trade.
During the Kano engagement, Ayeni described the city and the wider North-West as central to the ambition of doubling Nigeria’s non-oil exports.
Achieving that, however, will require more than encouraging people to export.
It means changing what is exported, who exports it and how much value is retained before products leave the country.
This is where initiatives such as One State One Product, Cluster Export Development, Export 35 Re-Defined, the Export Mentorship Programme and NEPC’s capacity-building efforts become relevant. They address different parts of the same challenge: connecting Nigeria’s productive capacity with international demand.
There are already signs that Kano’s processing economy is responding. The emergence of modern processing facilities, including the AFCOTT Grains facility, suggests that investors do not necessarily see the North as commercially marginal.
They see raw materials. They see markets. They see labour and regional demand.
What they need is an environment where those advantages can translate into predictable returns.
That is why Kano’s export future cannot be discussed only in terms of agricultural production.
A factory without reliable electricity can quickly become an expensive monument.
A processed product without internationally recognised certification may struggle to enter premium markets. A competitive commodity without affordable financing may never reach an industrial scale. And even a strong international buyer may not wait forever for a shipment delayed by poor roads or inefficient logistics.
Exporting is a chain. When one important link fails, the whole chain feels it.
It would therefore be unrealistic to expect NEPC to solve all of Kano’s export challenges.
The Council can provide market intelligence, build exporters’ capacity, connect businesses with buyers, support export development programmes and help companies navigate international certification and procedures.
But it cannot generate electricity for industrial clusters, build highways, replace commercial banks or fix every logistics bottleneck.
Kano’s export challenge is ultimately an ecosystem challenge.
Power must work. Roads and transport corridors must work. Banks need products designed around the realities of exporters. Standards and certification must be accessible. Customs and border processes need to be predictable.
Businesses, too, must be prepared to move beyond the familiar model of buying commodities cheaply and selling them quickly.
From commodity trader to global producer. This may be the most important transition for Kano.
For decades, the North’s commercial strength has been associated with its ability to trade. The next phase should be about its ability to produce specifically for trade. There is a significant difference.
A trader earns from movement. A processor earns from transformation. An exporter with a recognised brand earns from processing, certification, packaging, intellectual property, market positioning and lasting relationships with buyers.
That is where the bigger opportunity lies. It also explains why NEPC’s attention to women and young entrepreneurs in Kano matters. The next of exporters may not resemble the generation traditional commodity merchant. Some will run processing businesses. Others will build digital export brands, aggregate farmers, provide logistics or sell professional and creative services beyond Nigeria.
The export economy is changing, and Kano has the population, commercial culture and productive base to take advantage of that change.
Kano also has geography on its side. Its historic trading links with Niger, Chad, Cameroon and the wider Sahel are not merely relics of an earlier commercial era. They are economic assets.
Research into Nigeria’s informal cross-border trade has shown the scale of activity taking place outside the formal export system. NEPC’s collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics to better capture this trade is therefore more than a statistical exercise.
It is about recognising an economy that already exists and finding ways to connect more of it to the formal export architecture.
For Kano, that could be transformative.
The city can become more than a collection point for commodities from Northern Nigeria. It can evolve into a processing and distribution centre serving markets across West and Central Africa.
That is a much bigger proposition than simply increasing the number of exporters.
The success of any export initiative should not ultimately be measured by the number of meetings held, businesses trained or memoranda signed. Those are useful indicators, but they are not the final test.
The real test is whether a farmer in Kano earns more because his crop is processed locally. Whether a young entrepreneur can secure the certification needed to enter markets in Japan or Europe. Whether a women-led enterprise can grow from a local product into a regional brand.
It is whether an investor can establish a processing plant and run it competitively.
And, perhaps most importantly, whether a commodity that once left Kano as raw material can leave instead as a finished or semi-finished product carrying a Nigerian brand.
That is where the export revolution will ultimately be measured.
Nigeria has shown that it can increase the value and volume of non-oil exports. The $6.1 billion recorded in 2025 is evidence of that progress.
The harder task now is to build the infrastructure, institutions and businesses capable of making that growth sustainable.
Kano has the raw materials. It has the markets. It has the commercial history. What it needs now is to close the distance between trade and industry, production and processing, and opportunity and execution.
That is the space NEPC is increasingly trying to occupy.
And if the North can make that transition successfully, Kano may not simply become another export centre. It could become one of the places from which Nigeria’s next export economy is built.
ABDULSALAM writes from Suleja, Niger State. He can be reached via: [email protected]
