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The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), through its subregional office for West Africa (SRO-WA), in collaboration with Compass Global Consulting, has launched a forum for 3-Day Regional Hybrid Business on September 21, 2021 in Lagos, Nigeria.
On the theme “Empowering Young Women to Drive Africa’s Transformation Agenda”, sector champions from various industries participated in this regional business forum structured around high-level meetings, consultations with business champions. , young people and women from the West African business community. ecosystems.
The Forum, which is in partnership with more than 350 partner coalitions, witnessed a huge flow of positive feedback from the opening ceremony. It started with opening remarks by
Dr Vera Songwe, Deputy Secretary General and Executive Secretary of ECA who explained that “The point of this conversation is how we can get West African women to take advantage of the knowledge, innovation that exists, to learn from building on the dynamism it has and ensuring that it can take their businesses a notch higher in the global sub-region and take advantage of more distant markets in the east and west ”.
Dr Vera Songwe said: “In a crisis the first thing we want to do is make sure that we prevent good companies from falling below and that we focus a lot on retention. Africa, especially the West African region, has population dynamics working there. The African population is estimated at 1.3 million in 2020 including more than 250 million young people and it is estimated that 10 to 12 million enter the labor market each year, but only 3.1 million of them find a job ” .
“AfCFTA is expected to increase Africa’s GDP by an additional $ 1 trillion to meet the needs: first unlock our borders, create value chains and ensure that African women all work together to create the chain supply of textile, fashion, agro-industry and basically increase the value of products and earn more from it and also they can become sub-regional and wider continental and international enterprises and not limited to geographies in which we exist today> added the Executive Secretary of ECA.
Honorable Minister of Finance Ms. Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed during her session underlined why it is imperative for society to empower young people and women. “We hope this will be an effective way to empower young people and women entrepreneurs and address the challenges of unemployment that we have in Africa, as well as meet the need to create jobs,” speaking on the effect leverage of the AfCFTA.
Highlighting the major shortcomings of African education systems and their impact on productivity, Ms. Ngone Diop, sub-regional director of the West Africa Office – ECA, said that “the regional capacity for innovation remains weak mainly in terms of because of the shortcomings of the education systems ”.
The representative of ECOWAS said that his organization will always be attentive to the roles that women and young people play in economic development. “This is about restoring the commitment of ECOWAS in favor of the empowerment of women and young people,” added Kolawole Sofola.
The first day was full of high-level delegates and insightful sessions and speeches that are sure to create major mind shifts to help the inclusion and advancement of women and youth in Africa and globally in general.
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