Cocoa Export from Nigeria To Belgium Has Overtaken Crude Oil- Ambassador Leenknegt.

By Favour Livingstone

His Excellency Pieter Leenknegt is the Ambassador of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium to Nigeria. He is a very warm, humane, and a diplomat with good personality to meet. Nigeria and Belgium established diplomatic relations in 1961. In this exclusive interview with FAVOUR LIVINGSTONE, Ambassador Leenknegt highlighted some of Belgium’s activities in Nigeria, and underscored Nigeria’s immense potential.

Excerpt :
Belgium Embassy has been involved in quite a lot of activities in this country, how smooth will you say are the bilateral ties with Nigeria so far?

One of the latest highlights in our bilateral relation was a study visit by the Nigeria Defence College to Belgium in the month of May, 2025.

So, some Generals from the Nigerian Army came to Belgium and they attended conferences, had rich exchanges, not only about security in a narrow sense, but for instance also about climate change, and what that means for security.

And recently, I had some echoes from colleagues in capital who said that they were really very interested and they had been very impressed by what the Nigerian Generals had to say about these things.

So, this is one example of a recent exchange that had been a long time in the making, but thanks to a few dedicated people now happened.

Trade Relations between Nigeria and Belgium?

Of course, in terms of trade relations, Belgium is quite high on the Nigerian list, I think in certain ways, because we’re one of the top exporters to Nigeria, top three in fact.

We’re also now seeing a diversification of the imports from Nigeria into Belgium for the longest time.
Crude oil was the main export product to Belgium.
It’s been overtaken by cocoa since last year.

So we hope this trend will continue and that we will see ever more non-fossil imports into
Belgium and also value added goods and a true diversification in terms of sectors.
Just as we’ve already seen a diversification of Belgian investments in Nigeria since a few decades, but it would be also good to see that translated in the trade realm.

We have seen some of your activities in supporting education and Art creativity in Nigeria, such as the Art Competition held in recent time by the Embassy……

That was the Peace Art Competition, where we had the youngsters compete for a prize in a drawing competition. And this was indeed an event we organized with a Nigerian NGO who had been very skilled and very thorough in reaching out to children from, I think, the 36 states plus the FCT, and then was handing out prizes to the lucky, or the happy winners, not the lucky ones, because it needs more than luck, it needs skill.
So, there are internal needs in this country, being the host country.

Have you identified any of the needs that Nigeria has, and how have you tried to solve part of this as part of you bilateral relationship?

Well, I mean, as an Ambassador in a country that is not a beneficiary of our bilateral development cooperation. I’m not looking really at things in terms of needs, but in terms of business matches.

So I’m before all looking into what kind of business matches can happen between Belgian companies that have ever either been established for the longest time here, or start-ups, first movers on the one hand, and then Nigerian counterparts on the others. So, my job is to get to know the institutional and business landscape here, private sector, and to find out what these good matches can be.

So, I’m a matchmaker, basically. So, of course, my first job is actually to look into the needs of Belgian investors. Sometimes Belgian creatives as well, who want to partner up with Nigerians, and then find out who here in Nigeria corresponds to that profile.

That’s how we go about it. And that’s how Belgians traditionally, and Belgian companies, have been active in sectors such as dredging, maritime land reclaim, construction materials, even shrimp fishing, all of that.
Managing airports. Partnering between Belgian and Nigerian airports to make things happen, and to get efficiency gains. Building ports, airports, managing those. All of these things are areas where Belgium can offer expertise to Nigeria.

And when it comes to partnering, of course, as an Embassy also, we have an open ear to civil society and, you know, their expectations to the wider world.
Now, there’s perhaps one important exception to that rule, where we really look into needs, and that would be what I call strictly the humanitarian sector.

In Northeast Nigeria, we’ve been around for a while as a donor, as many other western countries have been,
and luckily also some what we call emerging donors nowadays. And that was because there was a specific request in the midway the last decade from the Nigerian Embassy.

And that was from the Nigerian Embassy. I mean, we’ve been there for a while, but we haven’t had any response from the Nigerian Embassy, and we’ve had no response from the Nigerian Embassy.

So, you know, it’s a pretty big deal. We have to focus on both the Nigerian authorities, both to the UN, and to the outer world to assist them in, you know, the Boko Haram insurgency, and a crisis that was clearly spiraling out of control for the country. So that case was made, and that case, to some extent,
still remains valid for all the humanitarian needs that it has created.

And that’s also where Belgium is chipping in. And it’s also perhaps not a coincidence that Belgian NGOs also have been present very often in those same places, sometimes also elsewhere, but very often in healthcare-related activities.

We have a handful of Belgian NGOs with very specific expertises in those areas.

What can you say generally about Nigeria, generally about Nigeria?

Well, it’s a large and diverse place to explore. So I still come across new and unexpected places.
I was, for instance, last month, I was very enchanted by the natural beauty of Taraba State.

I was even quite stunned by the natural beauty of some surroundings in Abuja. That’s something that our briefs from Foreign Affairs don’t prepare us for. And nobody in Europe knows how beautiful places like Zuma Rock, or Maitama Hill can be.

And how much actually quite unspoiled nature there also still is in those places. So that’s part of the amazement. Of course, it goes without saying that, the cultural and religious festivals also come with lots of color, pomp and circumstance. And I’d say they’re almost still as unexplored.
And that’s why the public abroad has the natural beauty of the country.