Faced with challenges of foreign exchange crises and regulatory disruptions, Multimix Academy, in conjunction with the African Centre for Supply Chain, has unveiled the RAPID supply chain framework, developed as a practical response to the growing complexities and disruptions shaping modern supply chains across Africa.

Analysing the strategic framework, Director-General, African Centre for Supply Chain, Obiora Madu, argued that for too long, Africa’s supply chain challenges have been met with frameworks borrowed from other realities.

He said the framework, which has been validated at 99 per cent as Africa’s first proprietary supply chain governance architecture by senior practitioners, university academics, and the Federal Government, came during the closing ceremony of a three-day supply chain war room boot camp for C-suite executives from major organisations.

He said the purpose of RAPID, built on five integrated pillars for Resilience Architecture, Agile Response Protocols, Performance Intelligence, Integration Command, and Dynamic Continuity, was to design, operate and continuously strengthen supply chains that create value, withstand disruption, as well as adapt faster than the competition.

On what it takes to shape the supply chain in Africa, looking at the emerging trends and trade implications for Nigeria, Madu said it was about building human capacity to close the gaps.

He emphasised the World Bank Performance Index, which showed Nigeria’s low performance on logistics services.

He said ahead of the launch, the RAPID framework is expected to boost Nigeria’s image and also strengthen Africa’s competitiveness in logistics services.

Member of the Advisory Board, Multimix Academy, Mfon Usoro emphasised the critical role of supply chain and procurement in organisations, stating that without an efficient, resilient, and agile department, the goals of the organisation cannot be met.

One of the participants, Ladi Shonubi, said the programme was critical due to the emerging trends, where organisations needed to have a ready-made template to deal with the supply chain disruptions.

The camp had the participants undergo live simulations where they were able to work and bring out solutions in real time.