As captioned by the Entrepreneurng report, Working in the informal sector, adhering to legal regulations, and having access to market knowledge, training, and finance are just a few of the difficulties that many women producers, processors, and merchants in the agri-food sector in Africa confront.
Under their SheTrades Initiative, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Trade Centre (ITC) have just begun the second phase of their program, Empowering women and boosting livelihoods through agricultural trade: Leveraging the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The program, which spans four nations—Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, and South Africa—was created in 2021 to encourage women’s participation in the AfCFTA and increase their access to higher-productivity activities and capacity building, taking advantage of the new opportunities for regional trade made possible by the AfCFTA agreement.
Senegal and the United Republic of Tanzania will be targeted as the initiative enters its second phase, while a component on women’s access to finance will be tested in Ghana and Nigeria.
“We are thrilled to witness the program’s expansion and the way it is connecting with more women’s organizations and decision-makers in other nations and at various levels.”
However, Abebe Haile-Gabriel, Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa at FAO said that the initiative is a fantastic example of our technical efforts to assist inclusive agribusiness growth in partnership with regional partners and the AfCFTA Secretariat.
If the AfCFTA is open to all, it has the power to drastically alter African economies and the way of life for millions of people. The voices of women, particularly those in the agri-food industry, must be represented in every stage of implementation for the program to live up to its promise.
The initiative, which is currently in its second phase, is intended to carry out this transformative goal by utilizing the experience of FAO and ITC, according to Pamela Coke-Hamilton, executive director of ITC.
Gendering The AfCFTA’s Agricultural And Food Trade
Few studies have attempted to comprehend the potential obstacles and opportunities that women – particularly those in the agrifood industry – may face as a result of the AfCFTA, even though there is a growing body of literature on women’s engagement in trade.
To promote inclusivity, research was conducted in the program’s initial phase on two of Africa’s core value chains: fisheries and soybean-pssoybean-soybeanon, four policy briefs offer suggestions for making trade facilitation, non-tariff trade obstacles, and sanitary and phytosanitary standards more gender-responsive. These tools will be used by FAO and ITC throughout the upcoming year to guide their activities for women in the agri-food industry.
