The National Coordination Mechanism for Services Exports (NCMSE)
As Nigeria’s national framework for scaling services exports, the National Coordination Mechanism for Services Exports (NCMSE) focuses on a clear strategic objective: to convert Nigeria’s services capacity into sustained export performance. The framework responds directly to the structural challenges limiting growth in digitally delivered services—misaligned skills pipelines, fragmented market access, regulatory friction, and uneven trust conditions—by aligning institutions, markets, and delivery systems around execution. This mechanism does not replace regulators, licensing bodies, training providers, or export promotion institutions; rather, it aligns and accelerates them toward shared national outcomes.
Supply Competitiveness
This pillar builds export-ready talent and firms by ensuring Nigeria has a credible and scalable base of services capacity aligned with international market demand. It focuses on defining priority export services and roles, aligning skills development and certification to market requirements, strengthening quality assurance across training providers, and supporting inclusion across regions, gender, and underserved groups. The outcome is a reliable pipeline of talent and firms capable of delivering services to global standards.
Demand Conversion
This pillar turns capability into contracts by strengthening market access and buyer confidence so that skills and firm readiness translate into export outcomes. It focuses on developing destination-market strategies and playbooks, facilitating buyer pipelines and partnerships, improving exporter visibility and verification, and tracking placement, retention, and performance outcomes. The outcome is sustained export contracts, repeat buyers, and growing services-export revenues.
Enabling Environment & Trust
This pillar reduces friction and strengthens confidence by addressing the regulatory, infrastructural, and trust conditions required for services exports to scale. It focuses on clarifying regulatory requirements affecting services exporters, strengthening digital trust, data protection, and contracting standards, improving infrastructure readiness for services clusters, mobilising finance and investment aligned to services exports, and establishing transparent monitoring and reporting systems. The outcome is lower transaction costs, higher investor confidence, and improved execution certainty.
Governance and Coordination
The NCMSE operates through a clear governance and coordination structure that enables alignment, accountability, and delivery across institutions. This structure comprises an inter-agency coordination platform for strategic alignment and oversight, the NATEP Secretariat under the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, responsible for coordination, tracking, and reporting, and thematic Working Groups aligned to Supply, Demand, and Enabling Environment with public- and private-sector participation. This structure ensures responsibilities are clear, decisions are informed, and delivery is monitored.
Measuring Progress
Execution is tracked through a national performance framework that supports transparency, learning, and course correction. Measurement focuses on services-export value and participation, export-linked job creation, market reach and buyer retention, inclusion across regions and demographics, and regulatory and infrastructure readiness.