The Nigeria–China Strategic Partnership (NCSP) has strengthened collaboration with the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) in a renewed push to accelerate Nigeria’s industrial growth by positioning Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) at the centre of bilateral trade and investment initiatives with China. The engagement underscores a strategic effort to deepen private-sector participation in manufacturing, exports, and industrial value chains.
This followed a high-level meeting between NCSP leadership and the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), aimed at aligning institutional efforts to deepen Nigeria–China economic cooperation and drive SME-led industrial expansion.
Director-General of NCSP, Mr. Joseph Tegbe, said the partnership was established as a structured coordination platform to drive Nigeria’s strategic economic engagement with China in a disciplined and result-oriented manner. He outlined its core mandates, including oversight of Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) initiatives, advancement of priority economic programmes, and facilitation of catalytic industrial projects across critical sectors.
Tegbe noted that the next phase of engagement would prioritise harmonising ongoing initiatives, strengthening inter-agency coordination, and establishing clear execution frameworks to ensure Nigerian businesses—especially SMEs—benefit more directly and sustainably from trade and investment opportunities.
The meeting reviewed existing collaborations and investment pipelines, with both sides agreeing on the need to streamline coordination across federal and subnational levels to enhance policy coherence, improve implementation efficiency, and eliminate fragmentation that limits scale.
He also highlighted the strategic importance of leveraging China’s Zero-Tariff Agreement with African countries to boost domestic manufacturing, deepen value addition, and enhance Nigeria’s export competitiveness.
In his remarks, NACCIMA President and Chairman of the Organized Private Sector of Nigeria (OPSN), Engr. Jani Ibrahim, commended NCSP’s structured engagement model and its deliberate focus on SMEs as drivers of inclusive industrial growth. He reaffirmed the readiness of the private sector to collaborate with NCSP in mobilising enterprises, providing structured policy feedback, and ensuring measurable enterprise-level outcomes from Nigeria–China engagements.
Both parties identified practical pathways to integrate SMEs into manufacturing value chains linked to Chinese partnerships, expand agro-processing and value-added production, strengthen technical and vocational education collaboration to address industrial skills gaps, and promote the development of geo-cluster industrial parks to anchor regional manufacturing ecosystems.
They agreed to establish a formal working interface to translate strategic alignment into tangible outcomes, with defined focus areas including investment facilitation, SME capacity development, industrial cluster formation, and export-oriented growth.
The meeting underscores NCSP’s resolve to convert diplomatic goodwill into tangible economic gains, expand opportunities for Nigerian businesses, and strengthen productive capacity through collaboration with NACCIMA. This aligns with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which targets sustained and inclusive economic growth driven by industrial productivity and private-sector dynamism.