The International Trade Centre (ITC) has extended its agreement with the Private Sector Federation (PSF) Specialized Cluster to foster women’s economic development across markets.
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The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding that extends the SheTrades hub by five years took place on May 9, in the presence of a number of those who have benefited from the initiative.
SheTrades is a global initiative under ITC that aims to connect women entrepreneurs to markets. The hub aims to bolster the competitiveness and market access of Rwandan women-led businesses.
Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director of ITC, said that women’s economic empowerment is one of the most important pillars of development and it is critical to work with women who are actually driving it.
"We will continue our partnership and provide training of trainers, equip them with market intelligence, training materials, data gathering, and also to a possible extent work with them to access finance through various mechanisms that we are part of.”
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According to the Rwanda Development Board’s annual report of 2022, there has been a tremendous increase in female ownership of individual enterprises in the past five years, increasing from 27 per cent in 2017 to 34 per cent in 2022.
Therese Sekamana, Chairperson of PSF Specialized Cluster, said that the hub has been beneficial in training women entrepreneurs with essential knowledge of expanding a business, export requirements, and other documentation processes.
With this new MoU, she noted that they expect to move on to negotiating access to finance that would address the rampant issue that women in business face.
Jeanne-Françoise Mubiligi, Acting Chairperson of PSF, said that this agreement is another step towards changing the narrative of having more women leading SMEs and in the informal sector to elevating them to owning big businesses.
This, she elaborated, draws from capacity-building and access to finance as well as markets.
In addition, Mubiligi said that this is in line with getting ready to leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which Rwanda is at the forefront of implementation.
"We are positioning ourselves. We have four companies that participated in the first phase of the Guided Trade Initiative, and we have others that are going to participate,” she added.
SheTrades has 13 hubs across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and Hamilton said that the Rwandan hub is among the most successful ones.