Kigali, Rwanda — International Trade Centre (ITC) Executive Director Arancha González is passionate about this: Trade brings prosperity and other good things.She spoke to allAfrica at the organisation's World Export Development Forum and Fifth Senior Roundtable on Sourcing from Women Vendors in Kigali, Rwanda.
Rwanda has a tradition of Imihigo, holding ministers and local government officials to promises that they've made to the people. What kind of commitments would you like to come out of the conference?
We want this conference to have two big commitments - one is to boost trade through small and medium enterprises and to create jobs. Jobs for the youth, jobs for women entrepreneurs, jobs for the many micro, small and medium enterprises thriving in Africa, and elsewhere around the world.
The second commitment we want to make is provide answers to the many questions that traders have today. How do they unlock the competitiveness of their products and services, how can they trade across borders, how can they offer goods and services that the market is interested in buying? It's the answers to the hows, and for that we have top-notch experts that will be providing those answers so that together we can make trade an engine for growth and for sustainable development.
Why the focus on the continent at this time?
The International Trade Centre has been in operation for 50 years, and it has never, to this date, done its flagship event in Africa. I would think that it's high time we come to Africa. Africa is a continent which offers immense opportunities - it's the last growth frontier, it's a place where entrepreneurship is thriving but it's also the place where a bit more work needs to be undertaken to facilitate this trade. To improve infrastructures, to build the capacity of the small and medium enterprises, to help governments craft the right trade policies. It's the last untapped source for many small and medium enterprises, but we have to put all our efforts in leveraging that potential, hence the ITC coming to Africa.
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The World Export Development Forum is running parallel by the session on sourcing from women vendors. What do women have to offer?
Women are the half of the engine of our societies, they are half of the engines of our economies. We want to unlock fully the potential of this engine of our economies and our societies, and for that we need to tackle the many difficulties that women entrepreneurs face today. They are incredible assets, they re-invest 90% of their revenues in their families and their communities. This means better education, better healthcare, this means better food for the families, better housing. But in order to unlock this potential we need to make sure we address the bottlenecks to women entrepreneurship. Changing mentalities, but also making it easier for women to trade.
We want to launch a big initiative to use a market that exists - it doesn't need building, it exists - government procurement. Fifteen trillion dollars a year, and yet women only tap into 1% of this gigantic market. There is therefore untapped potential and we are all working together - private sector, goverments, and international organisations such as the International Trade Centre - to deliver results for the people.
