The Nigeria Competitiveness Project (NICOP)

About NICOP

The Nigeria Competitiveness project, NICOP, is a four-year project commissioned by the German BMZ and co-funded by the European Union under the West African Competitiveness envelope. It is being implemented by the GIZ Pro-Poor Growth and Promotion of Employment in Nigeria Programme- SEDIN. NICOP is designed to support key value chains in Nigeria to promote structural transformation, overcome the coordination and linkage failures and to improve access to regional and international markets while taking social and environmental concerns into account. NICOP will assist micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to take advantage of opportunities to add value and migrate to new and higher-level tasks along selected value chains.

NICOP aims at improving the performance, growth and contribution to industry, regional trade and exports of selected value chains and improve the climate for businesses at national and regional levels. This will be done through a four-tier approach. The project (1) Enhances the competitiveness at firms’ level, especially through work with industrial clusters, with a combination of market development as well as technical and entrepreneurial training and coaching approaches, (2) Strengthens intermediate organisations to improve and expand service delivery to MSMEs, for example with regards to quality controls, norms and standards certification, new green solutions, market access, competitive pricing of inputs, access to technology and IT-based solutions, etc., (3) Supports advocacy and reforms of regional, federal and state-level policies and regulations in favour of industrial and agricultural competitiveness, and (4) Assists adapting and introducing appropriate financial services and supports value chain actors to access funds for investment, in particular with regard to modernizing and upgrading production capabilities.

NICOP’s work aims at forging strong and durable partnerships with key public and private stakeholders across focal states to ensure that buy in and commitment is secured, and the multiplying impacts of the programme will provide the required systemic and sustainable changes.

 

Click to learn more about the West Africa Competitiveness Programme (WACOMP)

Funding

German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), co-financed by the European Union (EU)

Implementation Period

August 2018 to May 2023

Implementation Area

Nigeria

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