A launching seminar for three new export consortia was organized on Thursday, April 18, in the presence of Omar Behi, Minister of Trade and Dr. Andreas Reinicke the German Ambassador to Tunisia and institutional stakeholders , export support agencies and private sector actors.
The creation of these consortia will foster the emergence of a strong, global and impacting offer that effectively responds to the identified opportunities in the targeted markets of Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya and Nigeria where CEPEX has on-site representations.
In his inaugural address, the Minister of Trade reaffirmed the importance of seizing the opportunities offered by the sub-Saharan markets and of increasing exports to sub-Saharan Africa, which today represent only 2.7% of the total exports from Tunisia.
He also announced the organization of the second edition of the African Economic Forum in Tunis in September 2019, which reinforces Tunisia’s commitment to greater intra-African integration.
By emphasizing that “unity makes strength,” the Minister of Commerce praised the companies’ approach to incorporate into in consortia and stressed that “Nowadays it has become imperative for SMEs to cooperate with each other in order to reach a critical size, allowing them to bid on international tenders, to have a single point of contact to respond to increasingly complex customer demands and to offer an integrated end-to-end solution of the value chain.”
As part of an elaborate roadmap, companies will carry out joint actions on target markets based on the operationalization of synergies established between consortium members.
At the same time, the event was also an opportunity to discuss the specific difficulties encountered throughout the export journey, as well as to propose concrete measures to back the support structures to guarantee the success of consortia in their journey to capture sub-Saharan markets.
The creation of the consortia is part of the activities of the project “Promotion of export-creating activities to create new markets in Africa” (PEMA) initiated under the mandate of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development ( BMZ) and implemented by GIZ in cooperation with the Tunisian Ministry of Commerce and the Export Promotion Center (CEPEX).
This project aims to strengthen and sustain the export activities of Tunisian companies to countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
To optimize access to African markets, this project aims to improve the supply of public-private export promotion networks, strengthen the capacities of sectoral export groups and foster the emergence of Tunisian-German win-win partnerships