South Africa at The SIPPO Import Forum

The SIPPO Import Forum served as a critical platform for cross-sector collaboration to address the most pressing opportunities and challenges for international trade in the EU, more specifically the challenges of digitalization, sustainability, and the strengthening of export promotion systems. Moreover, it enabled the BSO’s to engage meaningfully with global buyers, importers and various associations. It brought together influential leaders from Business Support Organisations, Exporters, Importers, and Policy Makers.

A series of brilliant expert-led programmes for the day included:

BSO Round Table exchanges on sustainability and digitalisation

BSO’s across the eleven SIPPO country networks had an opportunity to engage on sustainability and digitalisation to enable them to learn from each other. The feedback from the South African BSO’s was similar, and they learned that they had similar experiences as some of the other BSO’s from the other ten partner countries.

Breakout sessions on “Main Market Systems and Collaboration”.

Participants from the various BSOs were grouped into breakout sessions on Marketing & Promotion, Market Intelligence, Compliance & Certification, and Export Promotion Policy & Strategy in order to engage and collaborate on innovative solutions.

Panel discussion

The panel discussion was conducted with the participation of several international organizations, together with SECO, the International Trade (ITC), Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE), and PROCOLOMBIA. As a result of these exchanges, the participating BSOs gained a clear understanding of the importance of global co-creation in the development of stronger, more resilient, and sustainable value chains.

Company site visits

Following the Import Forum, BSO representatives had the opportunity to visit Swiss Companies across the 6 SIPPO sectors. This provided the BSO’s with invaluable information about the macro and microenvironment of the Swiss market and standards. In addition, SIPPO South Africa facilitated company and peer exchange meetings for four BSOs from South Africa (the dtic, Wesgro, TIKZN and CECOSA).

As one of SIPPO South Africa’s objectives is to capacitate its BSO’s to better integrate into international trade, the Import Forum met this mandate as BSO representatives gained valuable information and increased their network and contacts with importers. The strengthened networks and shared insights are expected to enhance trade opportunities and support sustainable export led economic growth across SIPPO’s partner countries.