SIPPO's expertise strengthens Swiss Cooperation Projects

These projects, which are financed by SECO or SDC (“Deza”), can benefit enormously on the one hand from SIPPO’s knowledge in trade promotion and how to overcome the last mile to Swiss and European importers, and on the other hand from SIPPO’s collaboration with over 40 BSOs and its experts’ network from Asia to Latin America.

The primary objective of SIPPO’s Component 2 is to strengthen the export promotion component within SCPs. SIPPO has a high relevance to SCPs across the globe. Value Chain (VC) cooperation projects can gain greatly from SIPPO’s expertise in the last mile, as well as its BSO and expert network, while a VC project’s work in strengthening companies to become export-ready can benefit SIPPO’s endeavour with the BSOs on the long-term to enable more companies access to markets.

The activities under Component 2 can take place on four different levels.

At Level 1, “Sharing export promotion knowledge and contacts”, SIPPO supports Swiss Cooperation projects with knowledge and tools on market access and export promotion.

Successful projects in the past years took place in Peru and South Africa:

PERU
Since the beginning of the Second Phase, the SIPPO Peru team has been dedicated to generating synergies between the Swiss Cooperation Programs considering that they have a lot of experience with various value chains in the Processed Food sector such as coffee and cocoa.

In this context, for the first time of the mandate, SIPPO Peru participated as a collaborator in the organization of the Cocoa and Chocolate Show 2022 and built alliances between the BSOs with other Swiss Cooperation partners, such as the Green Commodities Program, implemented by UNDP, and SeCompetivo Program, implemented by Helvetas.

SOUTH AFRICA
BSOs and sector associations in the biodiversity ingredient and products sector benefitted from a peer learning capacity development workshop (SDP) which SIPPO co-facilitated together with ABioSA to share information on the support of sector associations for trade fairs and other trade promotion events. This intervention formed part of the activities in preparation of the African Biotrade Festival.

SIPPO is partnering with ABioSA, governmental departments, other Swiss cooperation programmes (SSAIP and GQSP-SA), BSOs and sector associations to realise the first African Biotrade Festival, which is co-located with the Organic & Natural Products Expo Africa 2023. The event will promote bio trade ingredients and products and create a platform to discuss and address challenges and opportunities, with an emphasis on market access, building business support networks, and creating linkages within the wider bio trade ecosystem.

At Level 2, “Coordination for sector/BSO networking events”, SIPPO may organise for a SCP specific sector roundtables or facilitate workshops related to export promotion.

Let's look at two interesting examples from Tunisia and South Africa

TUNISIA (Sector Processed Food)
SIPPO and PAMPAT have entered a partnership to increase the impact on the development of sustainable products in the natural ingredients sector and were organising a seminar in January 2023 with the indicative title "Le Secteur des Ingrédients Naturels: Un fort Potentiel à saisir" (“The Natural Ingredients Sector: A strong potential to be seized”)

As a result of the knowledge acquired during the Food and Health ingredient Europe 2022 activities, SIPPO, together with its partner BSOs CEPEX and APIA and the partner programme PAMPAT, organised this one-day seminar for companies and new exporters. The PAMPAT core group and the BSO members that are active in the natural ingredients value chain benefited from the market access knowledge capitalised by the BSOs and PAMPAT during FiE/HiE 2022, supported by SIPPO. Participants had the opportunity to better understand sustainability in the context of key drivers for food and health ingredients, such as export promotion, import market needs, and existing and emerging regulatory frameworks.

SOUTH AFRICA
SIPPO is engaged in ongoing collaboration with the GQSP-SA Project by supporting their Market Trends and Access webinars, together with the Project’s BSO partner, SAEOPA.

At Level 3, “Cooperation on market access activities”, the SIPPO country teams evaluate whether one of their BSOs could support a SCP with selected export promotion services.

On this level the SIPPO country team always carefully facilitates the collaboration.

SOUTH AFRICA
Ongoing participation by members of SAEOPA (GQSP SA’s BSO partner) in international trade fairs facilitated by SIPPO, in collaboration with SIPPO’s BSO partner, the dtic.

At level 4, "Advice in the design phase of SCP", SIPPO contributes in the early design phase of an SCP project by sharing knowledge and advice for trade.

One exemplary example comes from South Africa:

SOUTH AFRICA
The collaboration of SIPPO South Africa with the UNIDO implemented GQSP-SA project included sharing knowledge during early consultations and advice in export promotion-oriented services and market access for GQSP-SA’s BSO partner. In addition, input was given by SIPPO on possible synergies. Thereafter, more specific contributions were made to the draft ProDoc of the GQSP-SA project for the second phase.