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Why the NEPC–BOI Partnership Matters for Nigerian Exporters
By Kabir Abdulsalam
When FoodPro expanded its cashew-processing operations in Ilorin, Kwara State, the ambition was bigger than processing more nuts. It represented something Nigeria has discussed for decades but has struggled to achieve consistently: adding value to what we produce locally before selling it to the world.
FoodPro specialises in processing and trading cashew kernels for domestic and international customers, with export destinations including Europe and North America. NEPC’s exporter directory also identifies the company as an employer creating economic opportunities around Nigeria’s cashew value chain. 1
Its story offers a useful way to think about Nigeria’s export challenge. Having a product worth selling is only the beginning. Building a sustainable export business requires machinery, working capital, quality assurance, certification, reliable production and, crucially, access to buyers.
That relationship between production capability and market access is why closer cooperation between the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and the Bank of Industry (BOI) deserves attention.
For too long, Nigerian businesses have encountered the two sides of the export problem separately. An entrepreneur may discover an international market but lack the capital to fulfil a substantial order. Another may obtain financing to expand production without having sufficient knowledge of export standards, certification or foreign markets. The result is a frustrating gap between Nigeria’s enormous productive potential and what eventually leaves our shores.
For a food processor, closing that gap may mean buying modern machinery, improving packaging, obtaining food-safety certification and increasing output. For an agricultural exporter, it may involve aggregating produce from hundreds of farmers, preserving quality, providing traceability and delivering on schedule.
Finding a foreign customer is important. Being able to supply that customer consistently is what turns an opportunity into a business.
This is where the respective strengths of NEPC and BOI can complement each other. Under Executive Director Nonye Ayeni, NEPC has continued to emphasise value addition and stronger export performance, particularly in agricultural value chains. In the cashew sector, for example, Ayeni disclosed that exports reached $398.135 million in the first half of 2025, up 81.15 per cent from $219.780 million during the corresponding period of 2024. Cashew also moved from Nigeria’s fourth-leading non-oil export product in 2024 to third by mid-2025. 2
Those figures demonstrate potential, but they also expose the larger opportunity. Nigeria should aspire to export increasingly more processed cashew products rather than remaining principally a supplier of raw commodities. Ayeni herself has emphasised that the cashew value chain extends beyond nuts to products such as butter, cream, wine and other consumables. 3
That is where industrial finance becomes indispensable.
An export-promotion agency can identify markets, prepare exporters and promote Nigerian products abroad, but it cannot substitute for the financing required to acquire machinery, expand factories and sustain production. Conversely, financing alone cannot transform a business into a successful exporter if its products fail quality standards or it lacks access to international customers.
The logic of closer NEPC–BOI cooperation is therefore compelling: connect businesses capable of exporting with market-development support on one side and appropriate industrial finance on the other.
But Nigeria has been here before in another sense. We have signed agreements, established intervention funds and launched programmes with ambitious objectives. The real test is rarely the ceremony. It is implementation.
For Ayeni and NEPC, the opportunity is to make export promotion increasingly practical by helping credible businesses move from interest to readiness and from readiness to actual shipments. For BOI, the challenge is to ensure that viable businesses have access to financing that can translate export opportunities into greater productive capacity.
The experience of Nigeria’s cashew industry demonstrates what is at stake. In Imo State alone, exporters generated $8.6 million from cashew production and exports in 2024, according to NEPC. The Council has also facilitated the acquisition of 1,500 improved cashew seedlings for farmers in Okwudor and Okigwe, linking improved production with the objective of value addition and export. 3
Yet increasing agricultural production without expanding domestic processing would leave much of the economic value elsewhere. The bigger prize lies in producing locally, processing locally, packaging locally and then exporting competitively.
That requires coordination.
A small manufacturer should not have to navigate entirely separate institutional worlds to obtain market intelligence, certification support and financing. An export ecosystem works best when institutions recognise that a business experiences these problems simultaneously, not according to government bureaucratic boundaries.
There must also be measurable accountability. How many businesses receive support? How many subsequently expand their production capacity? How many achieve the certifications required by their target markets? How many complete their first export shipment? How many receive repeat orders?
Those figures will matter far more than the number of memoranda signed or workshops organised.
There is another important reason for getting this right. Successful exporters create effects beyond foreign-exchange earnings. Processing agricultural commodities domestically can support farmers, factory workers, logistics providers, packaging companies and other businesses throughout the supply chain. FoodPro’s own profile describes its value in terms of employment and business opportunities for rural Nigerian men and women. 1
Nigeria’s export ambition will ultimately be decided not in conference halls but on factory floors, farms and loading bays. It will be decided when a producer in Kwara can expand capacity to meet an overseas order; when a processor in Kano can obtain internationally accepted certification; when a manufacturer in Aba can finance new equipment; and, most importantly, when that first international customer returns with another order.
This is why institutional collaboration matters.
Nigeria does not lack products. It does not lack entrepreneurs. And evidence from sectors such as cashew shows that international demand can be significant. What Nigerian businesses need is an ecosystem capable of linking production, finance, standards and markets without forcing entrepreneurs to solve every institutional gap themselves.
If NEPC and BOI can help close that distance, their partnership could become more than another agreement between government institutions. It could become a practical bridge between what Nigeria produces and what the world is prepared to buy.
That should be the ultimate measure of success: not the MoU itself, but how many Nigerian businesses travel the difficult road from local producer to reliable global supplier.
Kabir Abdulsalam writes from Suleja, Niger State. He can be reached via [email protected]
