The outbreak of Covid-19 may have brought to a halt physical trade and investment missions, but it’s not standing in the way of the Western Cape’s export promotion ambitions.
The province is going the ‘virtual’ route and has just completed its first online mission to Botswana.
Rather than taking a delegation from South Africa to Botswana, the mission took place using the Zoom platform.
A total of 83 people took part in the event which included several private companies as well as stakeholders from both the South African and Botswana governments.
According to Wesgro CEO Tim Harris, investment opportunities, incentives, legislation and tax implications for companies investing in Botswana were among the issues covered. There were also several business networking sessions.
Wesgro’s next virtual mission – comprising 20 companies – will ‘visit’ Guinea this week, again via the
Zoom platform. It will feature group meetings and other B2B engagements between Western Cape businesses and key Guinean institutions and importers.
According to Harris the aim of the mission will be to introduce Western Cape businesses in the agribusiness, manufacturing and services sectors in particular to key Guinean businesses.
“The goal is to remain connected and increase exports to Guinea during and beyond Covid-19,” he said.
“Over the past two years Wesgro has been initiating business linkages with Guinea, a country that has shown a lot of interest in sourcing South African products and services. A physical mission to Conakry was already in the pipeline, but due to the lockdown restrictions Wesgro had to adjust to “business unusual” and found an alternative solution to link up Western Cape companies to potential Guinean business partners.”
Harris said plans for virtual missions to Cote d’ivoire and Cameroon were already under way.