At the registration lobby within the Serena Hotel grounds in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, delegates make a beeline to collect their conference badges. Others chat away excitedly, as more swap niceties of social convenience.
It is not yet mid-day, but the crowds keep swelling, as the media fish for vox pop interviews from the already registered delegates. Expectations keep the cameras rolling.
Seated on a bench a few yards away from the registration desks are a group of three women, all looking keen to gain entry into the packed 14th World Export Development Forum (WEDF), which took place from September 15th to 17th, 2014.
Most will make the time to attend the 3rd Women Vendors Exhibition and Forum, which is taking place alongside WEDF. All are sponsored by the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Rwanda Development Board.
One group of women is from the Zibanga Gacheche group, a start-up that unites men and women in Kigali, in the business of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Though the women are fluent in French and Kinyarwanda, their less good grasp of English puts them in a fix, as media repeatedly ambush them for interviews. But their passing dilemma is solved within minutes, as their team leader arrives in time to handle the journalists pressing for responses.
"Our group is a union of co-operatives that promotes handicrafts for both men and women," explains Francis Solinana, the group's team leader. "We work in the districts of Kigali City."
Solinana explains that he was inspired to join the group so he could be self-employed and also to promote the products, which he says have a cultural appeal.
"Up to now we have one international market - in Japan," he says. "The others are in Kigali city and the northern province [of Rwanda]."
This is the reason the group is here to attend the WEDF, which has attracted delegates from all over the world: to expand its sales. The group now has the opportunity to reach out to other potential market destinations that have an appetite for handicrafts, he says.
"We are meeting people from all over the world to exchange ideas," says Solinana. "For us it will help in promoting our products and improve them in a way that suits the markets."
But he wants more than one week's experience.
"We would like such a meeting here in Kigali every year," says Solinana, whose group makes products such as baskets, environmentally friendly bags, and also grows seedlings of plants that can be made into fabric, which can replace environmentally destructive plastics.
That wish may win support, as experts from the private sector, governments and even civil society charted the way ahead for Africa to find solutions which echoed a Forum theme: SMEs: Creating jobs through trade.
According to ITC Executive Director Arancha Gonzalez, the urgent need to boost trade and employment through greater competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is at the core of the discussions between global thinkers, business leaders and practitioners. SMEs, she says, account for 80 percent of jobs across all economic groups, including women and youth.
At the same time, Africa's foreign direct investment grew to US$ 57 billion in 2013 - among the reasons, she says, that the event was being held in the continent for the first time.
It is a promise that entrepreneurs like Gideon Kalimba cannot resist. Coming from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, Gideon acknowledges that he was attracted to the conference by the prospect of brushing shoulders with global blue-chip executives.
His wish was answered. The meeting offered Kalimba insightful business-to-business interaction with exporters and importers from all over the world. Ideas from the facilitated sessions, he believes, will connect him to overseas businesses, and with those from Africa.
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Kalimba's company, the Terminal Assistance Services, of which he is the managing director, operates at the Goma International Airport. It has a few surprises coming, he says.
"I am banking on the contacts I made with directors of companies and the delegations of executives to help me expand my firm into the league of world winners," he says.
Such optimism provokes thought showers, as the participants depart to sow the seeds they have reaped from the event back in their own countries. The results of such efforts will determine where Africa's SME sector will be in the next 50 years.
"Africa is the last growth frontier where entrepreneurship is thriving," says Gonzalez, as the ITC celebrates its jubilee year. "But to get there Africa's governments need the private sector, trade support institutions and international development agencies."
