While delivering the Fashion Business Series keynote address at Lagos Fashion Week over the weekend, the Executive Director and CEO of Nigerian Export Promotion Council, Olusegun Awolowo announced the grant of N500,000,000 to support the Nigerian fashion industry.
Since inception, Lagos Fashion Week has been instrumental in shaping Africa’s fashion future, by developing a platform for African creatives to showcase their creativity, providing collaboration and access to market opportunities, incubating and training young talent, facilitating impact driven conversations with key stakeholders as well as being at the forefront of developing our local manufacturing industry through capacity building. In the last 6 years, NEPC has played an active role as a partner in supporting Lagos Fashion Week’s capacity building and trade facilitation initiatives.
On capacity building through the NEPC Apapa Common Facility Centre (CFC), managed by Style House Files, youths, women and MSMEs are being trained in the global best practices of the fashion industry with the aim of increasing their respective global competitiveness. On trade facilitation, NEPC has remained a critical partner for the delivery of Lagos Fashion Week as well as its trade show seasons which has involved designer participation in WWDMAGIC in Las Vegas, Pitti SUPER in Milan, Tranoi in Paris, amongst others.
Delivering his keynote address, Mr. Awolowo said
“At the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) everything we do is inspired by the Zero Oil Plan. The Zero Oil Plan has one major mandate, which is that: Nigeria can and must survive in a world in which she no longer sells oil. As a result, at NEPC we constantly identify goods and services for which Nigeria has comparative advantage, potential for value addition and job creation, particularly for our women and youths. It is therefore no surprise we value the textile and apparel sector as a viable contributor to the economy and mainstay of the Council’s Zero Oil plan for diversifying the Nigerian economy.”
In his speech, Mr. Awolowo announced that NEPC under the Export Expansion Facility Programme (EEFP) umbrella has set aside a N500,000,000 (Five Hundred Million Naira) grant to support the fashion industry. Designed under the Nigerian Economic Sustainability Plan to ease the impact of COVID 19 on Nigerian businesses, The Export Expansion Facility Programme(EEFP) aims to play a pivotal role in implementing interventions that address capacity gaps, promote export inclusion, market access, and minimize logistical, payments and export trade facilitation challenges.
The N500,000,000 grant will be directly awarded by NEPC to thirty (30) fashion brands who have been consistent with solidifying their retail footprint in key cities and digital destinations across the world. The aim of the grant is to increase access to global market opportunities.
The keynote ended on a congratulatory note for Style House Files & Lagos Fashion Week with the announcement of Founder, Omoyemi Akerele as a Zero Oil Ambassador for Nigeria.