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ECA West Africa Engages Over 350 Coalition-Partners To Support Women And Youth Entrepreneurs In The Sub-Region

By Maxwell Awumah || Contributor
General News ECA West Africa Engages Over 350 Coalition-Partners To Support Women And Youth Entrepreneurs In The Sub-Region
SEP 25, 2021 LISTEN

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), through its Sub regional Office for West Africa (SRO-WA), in collaboration with Compass Global Consulting kickstarted a 3-day hybrid Regional Business Forum on the 21st September 2021 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Themed “Empowering Women Youths to Spur Africa’s Transformation Agenda”, sector champions in various industries have been partaking to be a part of this Regional Business Forum structured around high-level meetings, consultations with Business Champions, the youth and women in the West African business ecosystems.

The Forum which is in partnership with more than 350 coalition-partners has witnessed an immense turnover of positive feedback from the opening ceremony. It started with opening remarks by

Dr. Vera Songwe, Under Secretary General and ECA Executive Secretary who explained that “The purpose of this conversation is how we can bring the West African woman to leverage the knowledge, the innovation that exists, leverage the vibrancy they have and ensure they can take their businesses one notch higher to the global sub-region and take advantage of markets that are further beyond in the east and the west”.

Dr. Vera Songwe said “In a crisis, the first thing we want to do is ensure we prevent good businesses from falling below and focus a lot on retention. Africa, in particular, the West African region, has the population dynamics working for it. The African population is estimated at 1.3 million in 2020 of which over 250 million are the youth and it is estimated that 10 million to 12 million are entering the workforce every year but only 3.1 million of them find jobs”.

“AfCFTA stands to grow Africa’s GDP by an additional one trillion dollars to deliver on what is needed: first unlocking our borders, building value chains and making sure the African women all work together to create the supply chain for textile, fashion, for agro-industry and essentially grow the value of the products and earn more from that and also they can become sub-regional and wider continental and international businesses and not limited to the geographies in which we exist today> added the Executive Secretary of ECA.

The Honorable Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed during her session, emphasized why it’s imperative for the society to empower youth and women. “We are hopeful that this will be an effective avenue for empowering youths and women entrepreneurs and address the unemployment challenges we have in Africa, as well as address the need to create jobs”, speaking on the AfCFTA leverage.

Highlighting the major gaps in the African educational systems and how it affects productivity, Mrs. Ngone Diop, Sub Regional Director, West Africa Office – UNECA, said “the regional capacity of innovation remains weak mainly because of the deficiencies in the education systems”.

The representative of ECOWAS said that his organization will always be mindful of the roles women and youths play in economic development. “This is to reinstate ECOWAS’ commitment to women and youth empowerment”, added Kolawole Sofola.

Day 1 was fully packed with high level delegates and insightful sessions and speeches that are bound to create major mind shifts to aid women and youth inclusion and advancement in Africa and the world at large.

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