Vietnamese food products promoted in African market

The event will be one of numerous trade promotion activities aimed at supporting Vietnamese localities, businesses, and food supply cooperatives in seeking partners, whilst also connecting business opportunities for exports to the African market.

According to details given by the Organizing Committee, the function will include a plenary session and business exchange sessions.

This is widely viewed as a prime opportunity for local food enterprises to introduce and promote their products and connect with more potential customers.

Furthermore, it will also help food exporters to gain more knowledge about market requirements and technical barriers that exist in African countries.

Through these trade promotion activities, most African nations highly appreciate and trust the quality of food products coming from the Vietnamese market.

The African market also has a need to import a variety of food items in order to serve a rapidly growing population and improve people's incomes, while simultaneously offsetting the serious production impacts caused as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moving forward, there remains  plenty of room to boost the export of Vietnamese food products to the African market, especially items which enjoy high consumer demand. In addition, Africa's intra-regional production of some products is not sufficient enough to fully meet demand, such as processed products from coffee, pepper, and rice.

However, in order to export these goods, especially food products to the African market, enterprises must face plenty of difficulties, such as transportation and proper preservation of goods so they can be moved long distances whilst still maintaining their taste. This is in addition to facing underdeveloped trade procedures and regulations that exist in most African countries.

As a result of these challenges, local firms must invest in carefully-conducted research of market needs to find products that not only meet market needs, but also solve problems related to logistics services for food products.

Among the nation’s major export items to this market, rice has the largest turnover, accounting for 20% of the country’s total export turnover to Africa and also boasting great potential to increase exports, while coffee and pepper are also viewed as potential commodities.

Despite great demand, experts believe that when conducting business in the African market, Vietnamese firms must fully grasp business practices of the market, as well as legal regulations to avoid risks.

Moreover, Vietnamese goods must also compete with similar products of many other Asian countries such as China, Thailand, and Indonesia.