Create conducive environment for women under AfCFTA - GNCCI to government
The Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI) has called on the government and other relevant organisations to create a conducive environment for women and youth businesses to thrive under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
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The National Treasurer of GNCCI, Dr Emelia Assiakwa, said women entrepreneurs and traders dominated the private sector, with approximately 44 per cent of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Ghana being owned by them.
In spite of this, she indicated that women still encountered many challenges such as trade facilities, inadequate capital and production resources.
"It is imperative to ensure that Ghanaian businesswomen and youth fully grasp the intricacies of the opportunities and challenges presented by the AfCFTA agreement," she noted.
Conference
Dr Assiakwa was speaking at the GNCCI Women Conference in Tamale which was on the theme: "Making AFCFTA Work through a Deliberate Inclusion of Women".
The conference, which was supported by GIZ Trade Hub, seeks to address challenges confronted by women entrepreneurs and engage them in decision making on the framework of AfCFTA.
It also seeks to empower women-owned businesses on the protocol and implementation of the AfCFTA agreement and discuss challenges confronted by women in the SME sector within the context of the agreement.
Additionally, it explored opportunities presented by AfCFTA for women entrepreneurs while presenting policy recommendations for Ghana's contribution to the agreement protocol on women and youth.
Unique opportunity
Dr Assiakwa added that over 1,500 exporters and potential exporters, with approximately 60 per cent being women across the 16 regions of Ghana had been trained since 2022 to benefit from AfCFTA.
She explained that AfCFTA presented a unique opportunity to empower economically disadvantaged groups, notably women and youth granting them access to broader markets.
A section of the participants
For his part, the Northern Regional Director of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI), Hamidu Hazam Saana, said globally, women entrepreneurs were making major contributions to industrial transformation of the local economic development.
He, therefore, encouraged women and youth to strive to chart a viable path for attaining sustainable growth and development within the context of AFCFTA protocols.
Some of participants, who spoke to the Daily Graphic, said AfCTA had offered them the opportunity to meet those who were interested in their products in other African countries where they could now export directly which was more profitable than the indirect export.
They called on authorities to make the AfCFTA initiative duty-free to help reduce the cost of shipping their products to other countries.
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