Women hope free trade pact will spur Governments to end violence, sexual abuses

Harassment, gender-based violence and discrimination on the basis of gender will negate efforts by the African Union to achieve the intended benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Speakers at the ongoing Gender Is My Agenda Campaign held in Addis Ababa ahead of the African Union Summit of the Heads of State and Government have challenged the governments to end all forms of abuses against women in cross border trading such as theft of goods and cash, sexual harassment, and verbal abuse.

“When we talk about women’s roles in the AFCTA space, cannot we truly say that women have the same rights, access and capacity as their male counterparts? Women need to be dignified and the trading system must see women as equal players,” said Memory Kachambwa the Executive Director of the African women’s development and Communications Network (FEMNET).

Lauding the same view, a participant South Sudan Women’s Coalition said, “Women are not sex tools and the government officials manning borders must cease viewing small-scale women traders as such. Governments must ensure an end to harassment of women traders and human trafficking across borders.”

Even though a significant number of African leaders have discouraged gender-based trade related violence, this has however not lessened the vices against women, especially in some remote regions of Africa where customary norms often carry as much weight as constitutional laws. Where governments laws appear strong, operatives devise ways to beat their own system.

For example, in South Sudan- Sudan border, a range of actors, including border and customs officials, gangs working on behalf of the state or independently, smugglers, transport workers, and male traders, jointly or separately perpetrate violence against women traders.

Mercy Nnanna from Nigeria questioned the extent to which free trade area will affect the grassroot, particularly women, who constitute Africa’s largest agricultural producers but are not aware nor prepared of the cross border free trade pact.

Nnana said women are victims of unequal access to information between border officials and cross-border traders, including around what taxes and fees are due, as well as knowledge of the ‘rules of the game’, linked to traders’ levels of literacy, and familiarity with the border.

According to Nnanna, for the African Union to successfully accelerate the free trade pact, individual governments must first educate their citizens on what free trade pact entails.

The free trade pact, she adds, means that governments must increase investment in agriculture or else, the locals will lose out to foreign investors who will come in to take advantage.

“Governments must develop policies that would protect women businesses and level grounds for smallscale traders,” she said.

Malado Kaba of the African Development Bank said women do not only make 70% of food producers across Africa, but they also dominate informal trade across borders.

For example, she said, in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region where the informal trade contributes to 30-40% of the countries’ GDP, women control 70% of that informal trade.

As a testimony of the recognition by the input from women, Kaba said the African Development Bank has set up AFAWA (Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa), a pan-African initiative to bridge the $42 billion financing gap facing women in Africa.

“The AFAWA initiative is born from the realization that women are the backbone of the African economy and have grown to make the continent as one with the highest percentage of women entrepreneurs in the world,” Kaba said.
She however called for the AfCFTA to create synergy with other institutions and regulations to reduce gender inequalities across board.

Dr Nancy Gitonga, said the AFCFTA should work to harmonise quality standards so that women can trade across the borders without being stopped in any given country because of differences in standards.

The AfCFTA has committed to work with governors of central banks to close these gaps because they have a powerful tool needed for this, the budget.

A representative from the UNECA urged the private sector players to offer opportunity of mentorship, capacity building and support on women in business to support growth of products from Africa…through value addition in agro-based industry.

Source: newsghana.com.gh