BUILDING SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCE THROUGH LOCAL SOURCING AND INVENTORY BUFFERING: EVIDENCE FROM THE NIGERIAN FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY (2020-2024)

The study examined the relevance of local sourcing (LS) and inventory buffering (IB) to enable Nigerian food and beverage (F&B) companies to develop the supply-chain resilience (SCR) between the years 2020 and 2024, after the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic exposes the structural vulnerability of global supply chains, particularly to economies that rely heavily on imports as is the case with Nigeria, shifting toward the models of sheer efficiency to the resilience-oriented approaches. The study applies the Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT) LS is a network-reconfiguration capability associated with increasing agility, and IB is a resource-reconfiguration capability that enhances robustness. The study sample used was a survey of 245 senior and mid-level managers of F&B companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group, hence, a quantitative cross-sectional design. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were done in SPSS. Findings indicate that the majority of companies increased the sourcing of important raw materials in the country and retained more inventory reserves of essential inputs in 2020-2024. Local sourcing is found to be very effective in improving supply-chain agility (t = 53.865, p = less than 0.05) and the level of inventory buffering has been established to significantly improve supply-chain robustness (t = 59.399, p = less than 0.05). Further, 44.1 percent of the companies considered LS and IB to be equally essential resilience strategies. The paper concludes that LS and IB supplementary increase the operational continuity, responsiveness, and shock-absorbing capacity. It advises the adoption of a combined resilience model between localization, strategic holding of stock and development of capability by the F&B companies in Nigeria to stay afloat in the future in case of future disruptions.