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AfCFTA will create new opportunities for women

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The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will create new opportunities for women in economic areas, where they are concentrated, such as agriculture, industry, services and commerce.

To ensure that women have access to these opportunities, members of the African Union must take intentional steps to create and implement gender-sensitive policies and implement targeted complementary measures.

Mr Gerald Woode, Senior Researcher at Ghana International Conference on Trade and Finance (GITFiC), said this during the conference’s monthly briefing on the topic: “Distributive Impact of AfCFTA on Reduction poverty and employment in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the AfCFTA area on unemployment, he said employment in North Africa is expected to increase from 64.2 million to 75.9 million by 2035 at an annual rate of 1.12%, which is fairly close to the average excluding ZLECAf.

The lead researcher, on the other hand, said employment in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow at an annual rate of 2.7%, from $ 437 million to over $ 650 million.

He said that concrete measures need to be implemented to promote entrepreneurship of women and youth, which could be accomplished through national efforts such as gender sensitive education, training programs for women and the financial support for women entrepreneurs.

Mr Woode said that fully realizing the potential of the AfCFTA would lift 67.9 million people, or 3.6% of the continent’s population, out of poverty by 2035.

According to the World Bank report (2018), 415 million people live in extreme poverty on the African continent, 60% of whom live in unstable countries.

“At the moderate purchasing power parity (PPP) poverty line of US $ 5.50 per day, full implementation of the potential will lift 3.6% of the continent’s population out of poverty by 2035 “, did he declare.

Mr Woode said full implementation of the deal could also lift an additional 30 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035.

He said the report said the extreme poverty rate in Africa is expected to drop from 34.7% in 2015 to 15.5% by 2030 and 10.9% in 2035.

Research indicated that throughout the period, sub-Saharan Africa would see a decline in extreme poverty to 13.1% from the most recent estimate of 41.1%, but most countries North Africa is expected to eradicate extreme poverty by 2035.

AfCFTA will create new opportunities for women

Mr. Selasi Koffi Ackom, CEO of GITFiC, said that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) must come together to have larger productions in order to make them eligible to be competitive in the international market.

He said companies need to consider the quality, price, standards and packaging of their products to be competitive globally.

Mr. Ackom called on policy makers to design mechanisms to help overcome language barriers to facilitate communication in the international market.

Mr. William Boateng, Managing Director of Business and Enterprise Banking Services at Bank of Africa Ghana, said businesses need to understand economic situations in order to actualize their goals and operations.

“We not only support Ghanaian businesses, but also businesses around the world to maximize opportunities and help them achieve their business goals and objectives,” he added.

Boateng said bureaucracies related to customs and administrative entry procedures, trade barriers, sanitary and phytosanitary measures should be kept to a minimum to facilitate trade.

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