The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) says the recently launched SheTrades project seeks to provide targeted support and technical expertise to women in business across the region.
The project, jointly organised by ECOWAS, International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), is aimed at ensuring that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) trade provisions and implementation mechanisms open equal market opportunities for women and men.
ECOWAS, in a statement, explained that the project will build on ITC’s SheTrades initiative to increase the competitiveness of women entrepreneurs and producers and connect them to markets, and foster more inclusive business and policy ecosystems in the region.
ITC, it is understood, will work with ECOWAS and other major stakeholders to realise a series of export readiness boot camps and online training sessions.
The training sessions, according to the statement, will provide women with the tools needed to position themselves as competitive exporters and traders within AfCFTA.
AfCFTA, which commenced trading in January 2021, is the world’s largest free-trade area, creating a market of 1.2 billion people and the eighth economic bloc in the world.
‘With the entry into force of the AfCFTA and the start of trading under its regime in January 2021, new trading opportunities are open for women traders in the region’, the Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission, Finda Koroma, said in the statement.
‘These opportunities should unlock our potential in numerous sectors and develop value chains for which our region has comparative advantages.
‘To this end, Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) need to be accompanied with adequate tools and resources in order to enable them increase their competitiveness and take advantage of export markets on the continent and beyond’.
Development Diaries understands that the series of in-person boot camps on export readiness will be initially launched in Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Benin and Togo.
‘Through these trainings, women entrepreneurs across ECOWAS member states will be able to leverage networks of women’s associations and tap into new markets and trading opportunities’, the statement quoted the ITC Executive Director, Pamela Coke-Hamilton, as saying.
‘The trainings will give the women the knowledge and skills needed to assess the viability of trading within AfCFTA-regulated markets for their product and then proceed with confidence if they choose to upgrade their business’.
It is understood that as Africa trades more with itself, it will be essential to target critical hurdles faced in exporting within the continent such as small and medium business (SME) export competitiveness, rules of origin, and technical and product safety standards.
Photo source: ECOWAS
