‘Opportunities In Intra-Africa Trade Amongst Women Driven SME’s Is Enormous’ – Ahile Ngunan
The Oasis Reporters
September 25, 2024
At the West Africa meets East Africa trade missions and business development tours, I learned that about 70% of SMEs in Nigeria are women driven and this made quite a lot of sense to me because Nigerian women take entrepreneurship seriously .
The aim of this initiative by Compas consulting, which is sponsored by AfreximBank is to promote intra trade missions across regions within Africa, in order to strengthen our economy, promote peace and maintain African unity.
Available data says that intra African trade generates about $192 billion with only 15% being within Africa.
Surprisingly, southern Africa does about 41.1% within themselves.
What this therefore means is that the rest of Africa has been sleeping on ourselves, passing each other by and struggling to trade abroad when we both have a huge demand for each other’s commodity within the continent.
I remember when I was trying to make a deal with an avocado oil manufacturer in Kenya, the processes involved and the issue of pricing hindered it.
Afrexim Bank has come in to put structures in place in order to help make trade with each other within the Continent seamless.
It’s really heartwarming to have had the opportunity to sit down with great women in the entrepreneurial space, discussing business expansion, new markets exploration , capacity building and many more.
As someone who is passionate about Africa, our unity and growth is heavily dependent on what we can do to first of all embrace each other, and with this pre-mission activation tour, I look forward to a free trade zone and flourishing Africa.
Ahile Ngunan.
