Less than one week after the first-ever Niger Delta Economic and Investment Summit, the conveners, the Niger Delta Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Trade, Mines and Agriculture (NDCCITMA), has sealed a major deal to galvanise investment in the region.
The deal was signed with Maistrade Multipurpose Cooperative Federation Limited on Agribiz, value chain access, and investment in Niger Delta economic zone.
The deal is expected to bring all businesses and agric value chain enterprises under a digital ecosystem for structuring and financing.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed is aimed at establishing a strategic collaboration that will jointly identify, mobilise, aggregate, and facilitate access to investment, development finance, and market opportunities for credible Agricbusiness, cooperative, medium, and small scale enterprise, value chain opportunities and projects in the Niger Delta region.
This was signed by Idaere Gogo-Ogan, Chairman of the NDCCITMA, and Benjamin Aduli, president of Maistrade Multipurpose Cooperative Federation Limited (MAISTRADE) known as the chief vision officer.
Maistrade Multipurpose Cooperative Federation Limited is indicated to build digital financial ecosystems and cooperative infrastructure to support farmers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and cooperative members across Nigeria.
Maistrade works alongside partners like Mechanised Agricultural Investments and Services (MAIS) Limited, uniting numerous independent cooperative entities and hundreds of thousands of members across Nigerian states, its records indicate.
It is also said to have collaborated with major apex bodies including the Cooperative Financing Agency of Nigeria (CFAN), the National Agricultural Cooperative Organisation (NACO), and the Cooperative Housing Federation of Nigeria (COHFON).
According to a statement signed by both parties and issued to newsmen, NDCCITMA would serve as a strategic regional access and mobilisation partners for eligible businesses, cooperative, value chain operator, mobilise and facilitate access to business and institutional network, support identification and preliminary referral of credible projects and enterprise and also facilitate engagements with relevant private-public sector and institutional stakeholders.
While reiterating its commitment to poverty reduction, job creation, and development of small and medium scale enterprise in the region, the statement added that MAISTRADE would provide the digital registration, project intakes and profiling infrastructure of the program, establish and manage the digital project pipeline and relevant date structure.
The MoU also revealed that MAISTRADE would support project categorisation and aggregation, coordinate engagement with investors development, finance development and strategic partners as well as facilitate the integration of qualified opportunities into appropriate MAISTRADE ecosystem platforms and programmes.
The Joint Delivery Model (JDM) revealed that projects and participants’ information would be considered for investment, financing, and partnership purposes in accordance with applicable laws and parties’ confidentiality.
The statement however did not create a commitment by either party to provide funding for tasks unless separately agreed in writing.
According to the agreement, both partners would operate a common pipeline of identifying, registering, profiling, aggregating, screening, qualifying, matching, financing, monitoring and reporting.
The statement noted that the MoU would remain valid for a period of initial three years and would commence from the day of execution, and subject to renewal or amendment.
Details of how the support would operate were not available at the time of filing this story, it was gathered that the partnership would prepare businesses working with or recognised by the NDCCITMA to gain digital structure and be positioned for financing and other visibility requirements.
This is expected to end the era of businesses in the oil region complaining of lack of funds. Jobs are said to be the major expectation in months to come as businesses would expand their capacities and productivity, thus creating more jobs massively.