Trading across the continent must be made easy for women - Joyce Williams Esq

Special Advisor and Head of Diaspora of the AfCFTA Joyce Williams Esq, says women face security issues when doing business across the borders.

She said this in an interview with the media on day two of the Africa Globalized Investment Forum organized by AfCFTA Policy Network.

According to her, APN is looking forward to creating partnerships that will make trading across the continent easy for women.

She said the goal of the women in trade conference forum is to bring women together entrepreneur businesswomen from the continent and then give them the advantages of the AfCFTA.

She mentioned APN group wants to be able to reach women not only in Ghana but women through all the countries on the continent and work together.

Also, women are in business but women's businesses turn to be capitalized.

“They face security threats and encounter very expensive with tariffs trading when doing business across the border”

She added the women in trade conference is targeted at advocating to provide adequate security and to remove some of the human elements that put women at risk.

"APN being the leader and the first network on AfCTA, we would like to run this with partners, governments, private sector with the focus to bring all investors from across Africa and outside Africa to network, partner and look for sectors they can develop".

Background

The AfCFTA policy network was established in 2019 as the lead and largest international nongovernmental organization (NGO) focused primarily as a think tank on African continental free trade area implementation.

The Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, believed to be a game-changer in Africa, commenced Free Trading on January 1st, 2021.

To accelerate the implementation and realization of the benefits under this Agreement, intra-African trade must be boosted by producing and patronizing quality African products and services.

Currently, intra-African exports stand at about 17% of total continental exports.

Increasing this share will go a long way to increase value addition, enhance employment creation, improve incomes and livelihoods, and ultimately lift millions out of poverty.

A World Bank study states that if Africans implement this Agreement effectively, there is an opportunity by the year 2035 to lift 100 million Africans out of poverty, with additional 30 million Africans being lifted out of extreme poverty.

The AfCFTA is further expected to enhance competitiveness at the industry and enterprise-level by exploiting opportunities for scale production, continental market access, and better re-allocation of resources, implementation and consequently the realization of the full benefits the AfCFTA presents.

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