Deputy Minister for International Trade, Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei, revealed that women are more active in trading within the ECOWAS region compared to their male counterparts.
These female traders, like others in the sector, encounter challenges such as accessing trade finance and managing their cash flows.
In response, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, with support from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has provided tablets to 20 importers to enhance their operations in the digital age.
This initiative represents the initial stage of a project by the Ministry of Trade and Industry in collaboration with ECOWAS.
Asiamah-Adjei noted that this pilot phase aims to help traders operate more formally.
She urged traders to utilize various social media platforms to market their products, manage resources, and boost sales.
“We know that for every economy to drive and drive well, it means the private sector is doing well and today, one sector of the private sector that we are taking care of is the importers…there are a lot of products that they import onto our market and the majority of these micro, small, and medium importers are women and they usually go through vast challenges to ensure that their operations are smooth enough.”
“ECOWAS today supported us to be able to support our micro traders, importers with these gadgets to enable them to take advantage of the new era. In the past, we supported traders with bookkeeping and other things but today, we want them to also take advantage of the digitalized era and we want them to be able to have contact. They wouldn’t need to travel all the way to where they import their cargo from and with these gadgets, hopefully, they will be able to operate in a more formal way than they usually were operating,” she added.
Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei further said, “This is a pilot and the pilot has 20 of these importers and we took time to pick the 20 randomly from various sectors within the entire union.”
She highlighted that this initiative is a key component of the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s responsibility to develop policies and programs aimed at assisting the private sector’s operations and businesses.