International and Cross-Border Trade for Women: Women Integration into African Continental Free Trade Area {AfCFTA}.

The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) is aimed at creating a single market for goods and services among African countries, with 1.3 billion people and a projected $6.7 trillion market size by 2030. It is anticipated to boost intra-Africa trade by 52% and scale up manufacturing, industrialization, skilled employment, and glOBAl export market competitiveness. For a long time, the countries in Africa have not been able to leverage on its population to generate wealth for its people. This has largely been enjoyed by the other countries in Asia, Europe, and America. Also, the European Union (EU) with a population of about 500million people is controlling about 33% of world trade with about 70% of this being traded among the EU countries. Africa on the other hand with a population of about 1.3 billion people is only contributing just 2.5% to the world trade with just about 18% of this being traded among the African countries. The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) affords the African countries the opportunity to increase the trading activities among themselves and thereby increasing the African contribution to world trade and consequently creating more jobs and wealth as a result of the demand on the companies to grow their capacity to meet the new market demands

It is our understanding that women are less likely to be entrepreneurs and face more disadvantages starting and operating a business. In 40% of economies, women’s early-stage entrepreneurial activity is half or less than half of that of men. Micro entrepreneurs make upto 90% of businesses in Africa with most of them operating in the informal sector, over 48.7% micro entrepreneurs are women. It is evident that women are major players in Informal Cross Border Trade.

It is also evident that Women in Informal Cross Border Trade operating activities are highly informal and that they face numerous constraints such as sexual violence and harassment and due to weak trade networks and associations for Women in Informal Cross Border Trade, women traders have limited knowledge and information on the key provisions of regional trade agreements. They also lack a general understanding of existing trade facilitation instruments and their applicability.

Project Mission:

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• Achieve gender equality through women’s participation in regional International Trade.
• Reduce sexual violence/harassment among women-owned businesses.
• Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.
• Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment
• Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.