‘Kpomo’ delicacy frustrating opportunities in $60b global leather market—NEPC
The Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Segun Awolowo, has expressed concerns at the low level of Nigerian players in the global leather market space.
However, he observed that the Council is poised to change the narrative even though the love for local meat brand coming from leather popularly called ‘Kpomo’ remains a key discouragement for Nigerian leather exporters.
According to the Council, currently, there is a global trade of leather and allied products worth over $60 billion and efforts are on to encourage Nigerian exporters on the need to tap into the global leather market expected to increase its market size even further.
NEPC said it was intensifying its effort by targeting five per cent of the global leather market.
Represented by the Regional Coordinator for South West, Babatunde Faleke, at a public presentation and pop-up sales of made-in-Nigeria leather products, Awolowo lamented over the export of Nigeria’s natural endowments unprocessed, a trend he said provides job opportunities for other country.
He averred that adding value to the nation’s natural resources is the way to go to earn foreign exchange as well as creating job opportunities for Nigeria’s teeming unemployed youths.
NEPC official noted that “We have very few exporters of leather products in the global leather market space. So many people are not interested and they do not have the skill to produce to global standards and if we can just get 2 per cent of the global trade we will be fine, but our target is 5 per cent of the global leather market.
‘‘Our new strategy is zero to export, we are taking these exporters from zero level to export level which we call from start to finish and we are also worried about Nigeria exporting our leather in raw form only to get these products returned back to us as finished products. So, we have decided to train these exporters on value addition,” Awolow averred.
