Footwear Export Council hopes to open Ghana market for SA Manufacturers |
| The South African Footwear and Leathers Export Council is on a mission to assist the South African manufacturers penetrate the Ghanaian market. The Vice Chairperson of the Council, Mr Tavonga Gonyora will be one of about thirty businesspeople who will be travelling to Ghana next week in search of trade and investment opportunities in the West African country.
The businesspeople will be part of the Outward Trade and Investment Mission funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) through its Export Marketing and Investment Assistance Scheme. The objective of the scheme is to develop export markets for South African products and services and to recruit new foreign direct investment into the country. “Our main mandate as an export council is to drive exports of footwear products from South Africa to different markets of the world in order to enable the sector to contribute in the country’s economic growth and job creation. Our objective for travelling to Ghana is to get as many of our members as possible to partner with the local Ghanaian people who can distribute the South African-made footwear products in Ghana. The aim is to create mutually beneficial value-chains in both countries where we will provide our products to the Ghanaian entities to distribute and they generate revenue through the distribution of our products,” says Gonyora. He adds that the limited research that he has conducted on the Ghanaian footwear and leather industry has shown that there are numerous opportunities that the SA companies that can take advantage of. “Ghana’s footwear and leather manufacturing base is not as big and strong as it is in South Africa. There is potential for various cross linkages that can be created through partnerships and direct exports, as well as opportunities to share skills and expertise all of which can enable the South African companies to contribute in the growth of the Ghanaian footwear and leather manufacturing industry. the dti’s Foreign Economic Representative in Ghana has already arranged a couple of meetings with key industry stakeholders in Ghana and we are optimistic that various other opportunities will arise from those meetings,” adds Gonyora. The SA Footwear and Leathers Export Council represents about 200 footwear and leather manufacturers in South Africa and is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that its members are exposed to different markets of the world in order to increase exports of the footwear products. “We partner with entities such as Trade and Investment KwaZulu-Natal and Productivity South Africa to empower our members on various aspects of the export market to sure their export readiness and preparedness. We also partner with various leading international fashion houses to educate our designers on new trends in order to make them internationally competitive. We then work with the dti to identify various markets that we can assist our members to penetrate such as the forthcoming mission to Ghana,” concludes Gonyora. Enquiries: |
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