Food Export Rejection: Nigeria Sets Up Quality Center, Attempts To Reverse N539 Billion Losses
In December 2022, Prof. Benedict Oramah, the chairman of the African Export-Import Bank (Afrixembank), revealed that Nigeria lost an estimated $700 million annually due to rejected agricultural products. He claims that “about $700 million worth of agricultural products are rejected from Europe alone owing to poor quality.
Similar to this, roughly 76% of African exports are turned down every year. The federal government has established an organization called the National Quality Council (NQC) to deal with this and recover the N539 billion lost due to continual rejection of Nigeria’s export goods in the worldwide market, which has become an emergency.
The newly established organization is in charge of making sure that, among other things, agricultural products shipped to the foreign market adhere to standards and are not rejected. He emphasized the need for more cooperation between public and commercial organizations and institutions, for hosting the National Quality Infrastructure, and for raising awareness among those involved in the export value chain.
The NQC chairman warned Nigerian exporters to make the most of the country’s high-quality infrastructure in order to conserve the nation’s limited foreign currency, boost the effectiveness of the export value chain, and lessen the likelihood that their goods will be rejected across regional, continental, and international borders.