UNITED NATIONS .(ByXSgVvS NATIONS UNIES
ECONOMIC COMMISSION WtiJBSKJIsl COMMISSION ECONOMIQUE FOR AFRICA sj^&ffi? POUR L'AFRIQUE
African Women in Trade
Paper prepared for the Seminar on Women and Trade at the First Arab-African Trade Fair in Tunisia,
October 1993
African Training and Research Centre for Women
(ATRCW)
INTRODUCTION
1. Since the declaration of the International Women's Year and Decade in 1975, many Governments have tried to improve women's integration into modern socio-economic life of nations. The Lagos Plan ofAction (LPA) stressed vocational and management training as a means for women s integration into modern business, especially trade. The LPA further recommended women's role in small-and medium-scale enterprise development, a cornerstone strategy for African economic development. Resolution 736 (XXVII) of the ECA Conference of Ministers in April 1992 also emphasized the potential of women in trade.
2. Much emphasis is laid on trade because in most parts ofAfrica women and girls ofall ages and ethnic groups are already active, self-employed traders in the informal sector. Many are already the majorfoodproducers. Trader and/orfarmer/and/or handicraft manufacturer, the African woman is not a stranger to business management. Her role as food producer raises her above mere household drudgery. She now needs to step into the future of modernizedfactors ofproduction, marketing and distribution. She needs now to look to export trade to expand her scale of operations and seek larger intra-African and continent
international markets. She also needs to move into larger-scale domestic trade activities, not just in terms of volume of business, but also level and type of activity in the trade structure.
For example, women may need to invest in terms of vertical or horizontal integration oftheir operations or may need to hire an MBA graduate or take a business course herself. Many
African women have considerable skills infashioning handicrafts using beads, leather, textiles, wood, straw, clay, etc. They have valuable design and production knowhow and could be attracted to the trade sectorfor access to cash income, both as self-employed and salaried workers.
3. The Abuja Declaration on participatory development has also supported the role of women in trade and commerce and this first African-Arab Trade Fair has also accomplished a great task by establishing such a basis for African-Arab Trade cooperation. It opens no future possibilities for encouraging the participation of African and Arab women in export trade, motivating increased scales ofproduction, finding new customers and suppliers and exchanging trade, technology and cultural exchange.
4. In most African countries trade is an area where women are visibly involved and have beenfor centuries. African women, both urban and rural, turn to commercial activities as the most immediate and accessible in meeting their needsfor cash-generating activities. In many African countries women handle as much as eighty percent of trade in localfood items such
as vegetables, cereals and spices, fish and fish products, local textiles, jewellery and local garments. Urban women especially have some access to the import-distribution sub-sector.
Women's trading activities in Africa are directly linked to their dominant role in food production. They are therefore mainly found as domestic trade operators dealing in local
and!or imported products.
Market-place trade
5. Except in afew cases noted in predominantly Muslim North African countries, taboos and prejudices regarding women's role in market-place trade are not common. This role is a traditional one which has naturally evolvedfrom African women's socio-economic role as a producer and distributor oflocally consumedfood items. In such West African countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo and Benin, thirty five to eighty percent of the total trade workforce is formed by women. In Eastern and Southern Africa, it is twenty to forty percent.}] The significance of this high participation ofAfrican women in traditional trading is magnified by thefact that eighty five percent ofthese women are self-
1/ "The integration of Women in Trade and Commerce: Situation and Prospects", ECA Regional Workshop, Niamey, Niger, 1988,
p.3.
employed entrepreneurs. In Europe North America, Asia or Latin America self-employed women do not form such high percentages of the tradework force.
Aftican women's market place activities are basically of three types:
(a) Micro-retail: Women produce and/or sell food items such as vegetables, or charcoal and paraffin, etc. Both rural and urban production and sell directly to consumers. Retail trade offruits, vegetables, cereals, marine products, textiles and cosmetics are dominant trade items.
(b) Domestic wholesale: Women in this sub-sector, buyfrom producers often at the place ofproduction, and sell to middlemen and/or retailers. They are mobile operators with sizeable financial resources. They sometimes pre-ftnance producers and/or directly invest in production. They may employ small work forces in vegetable production, traditional fishing, handicrafts production, textile dying and/'or garments production. Women in this sub-sector find it difficult to get credit and credit-management assistance from the modern banking sector, to whom "small business" means hundreds and thousands of dollars and not the two or three thousand which such traders need. Informal banking such as "tontines and loans from family and friends are usually resorted to often at high "interest" rates. Sometimes, where integration into
the modern trade sector is more advanced, supplier's credit may be available or group collective savings schemes.
(c) Import-distribution: Such activities are usually the first steps towards modern trade and external trade especially. Mainly urban women make business trips to other African countries and/or to other continents to bring back foreign goods, often as accompanied luggage. Popular trade items for home market
distribution include jewellery, garments, shoes, etc. The famous "maman Bern" at Senegal, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Ghana operate with substantial profit margins and can sometimes offer clients creditfor three to twelve month periods.
6. Thus, we find that African women have a native, traditional role and base in market place capital accumulation for family welfare and reinvestment. Incentives, training and
guidance and technical andfinancial assistance with production and marketing could propel African women into a greater role in modern African trade, a role in which they already have a comparative advantage.
Cooperatives and small-and medium-scale enterprises and groups
centuries, sometimes accompanied and entertained by appropriate songs and choruses.
Modern cooperatives, enterprises and groups for production and/or marketing or related services have sprung up all over Africa in recent decades. They tend to improve access to credit and training from national and international sources, as they have more formal management and accounting, more collateral to offer collectively, legal personality and institutional sponsorship. Specialpromotionalprogrammes have achieved women's vocational training for example, in handicraft production and groupings into professional, mutual interest, commercial enterprises.
8. Yet, women's share in total trade turn over in Africa is still marginal. This is due to the fact that they figure mainly in the domestic commodities trade in general and local food products trade in general and localfoodproducts trade in particular, while it is export-import activities which feature mainly in modern trade. The role of African business women in modern trade is therefore still marginal. Men's role in cash-crop exporting, their easier access to credit and to training, as well as prevailing societal andfamily gender roles all tend to create an enabling environment morefavourable to male participation in the modern trade sector. It is still common in Africa for example to expect the woman to use the hoe, but the man to drive the tractor, or the woman to carry her goods on head or back while the man does so by bicycle or motorbike or by bus, etc.
should be made to speed up the integration of larger numbers ofdynamic women into the modern African trade sector, not only for trading activities per sector, but also because through trade, African women have proven ability to accumulate savings.
Their savings are capital for investment in family welfare or business activities.
African women also haveproven, centuries-old, comparative advantage and experience with local commodities trading especiallyfood distribution. Their integration into the modern trade sector is as natural evolution ofa role in which African women exceed.
RECOMMENDATIONS
(a) Governments and institutions have to become gender-sensitized in theirpromotion and facilitation of women in business and in trade specifically. In the same ways that struggling low-income countries need compensatory mechanisms to enter and maintain markets, so too do women need preferential programmes to help establish them in a modernized and monetized economy. Women need business training, help to identify projects and sites, design business plans formulate feasibility proposals, funding requests, etc. They need improved technology and accounting techniques and constant trade information, Government intervention and private sector campaigns should aim
at creating an enabling trade environment, making special references and provisions for women in this area.
(b) Government ministries, research institutions, NGOs, women's groups and centres and the like must intensify research into women's present level ofparticipation in national economies, on a national case-by-case basis. Only by knowing the actual structure of their participation at what stages and levels, with what values and volumes, can assistance be targeted specifically and quantified. For example, in some Muslim communities, more promotion might be needed to initiate women's involvement, while established women's traders in some West African countries might need credit assistance to buy a pick-up vehicle to movefrom retailing to wholesaling. Each society has its women at different stages ofadvancement in their integration into the modern trade sector and in the long run, unless societal sector and in the long run, unless societal attitudes and opportunities are conducive women's status quo continues unchanged.
The ECAIATRCW has implemented a project entitled: "Increasing Women's Access to Credit Through Training in Management and Credit Techniques" in three States (Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda). From its research analysis of women's entrepreneurship development in each country, it ascertained why women
behind and came up with set of guidelines for action.
conduct appropriate courses, seminars and workshops that cater for the educational levels and economic activities of specific beneficiaries training. Entrepreneurship training and low and middle-level executive training should be emphasized. Training courses which are integrated with production marketing credit schemes or technical extension services are especially recommended. Business studies courses in high schools and junior colleges should also establish special-interest business classes for girls from the given society.
(d) Banks and other credit institutions which acknowledge their developmental role should formulate and implement innovative ways ofgranting business women access to credit.
There is much evidence that where there is easy access to formal institutional credit at reasonable interest rates, women will improve already established businesses or start-up new ones. Financial institutions do not usually stress domestic trade financing, yet this is the developmental stage in which most African business women operate. Banking regulations need to focus on incentives and growth and not merely control and compression. For example, husbands andparents do not like to risk their land titles, if these have been issued, for loans for wives or daughters. Yet, the type ofcollateral preferred by mostpublic andprivate banks is a land title, in societies that traditionally exclude women from owning land and property. Even in rural areas
where women work in thefields and markets, they seldom have access to control ofthe income, which could be offered in some cases as collateral.
Even opening up a bank account may be stressfulfor a woman and married women in some countries need the signature of their husbands to secure loans.
Similarly, the high interest rates charged by most financial institutions discourage women from borrowing.
New banking frameworks with developmental dynamism have to be devised. For example, emphasis could shiftfrom automatic collateral requirements to criteria based on group guarantees, or the profitability of the investment itself. Banks could train more women credit officers and institute special - windows and countersfor servicing women clients. Most women wishing to enter export trade would not understand how a letter of credit, say, operates, so banks also can play training as well as business advisory roles, in keeping with their location in developing economies.
(e) Jobs for women in the business and trade sector should be promoted as one way to integrate women into business skills and the commercial environment. Many women unable or unwilling to face the precariousness of self-employment in an informal sector, may perform well as managers, accountants, cashiers, secretaries, etc. Jobs for bringing women into the business would deserve special trainee programmes or a
degree ofcompensatory employment to achieve genderparity in access to employment.
A sales clerk in a retail outlet may one day own her own business and promote her products at domestic and international trade fairs.
(f) Chambers of Commerce and national and regional export promotion agencies should recruit morefemale participantsfor exposure to tradefairs and trade missions. They
should survey business women with activities able to be developedfor export, identify those with export potential and provide product development and adaptation services packaging and labelling, pricing and marketing advice. Especially with thefunctioning of regional markets such as ECOWAS or SADC/PTA getting African women to evolve larger-scale export activities seems a natural progression of their historic role as traders and producers even while home-based. Women's trading groups should be represented in meetings ofpreferential trade areas and in consultative meetings on the establishment of the African Economic Community.
(g) Women themselves must aspire to be self-reliant in modern businesses with tradeable products. They have to be prepared to take risks and to face up to competition,
change and new ideas. They must make serious efforts individually in partnership or as groups or associations to venture into non-traditional trade activities and not be confined to the traditional women's lives. They should be encouraged to expand and diversify and to travel to neighbouring countries and others to establish market contacts and get new ideas.
(h) Trade operators, networks and facilities should be restructured, and expanded according to modern requirements in retailing, wholesaling, importing and exporting.
Paper work and procedures should be simplified, unnecessary intermediaries and controls removed and working conditions improved.
Working conditions in traditional markets both urban and rural, need substantial improvement, not only in terms ofinfrastructure and management but also in terms of incentives. Shelters and markets should be improved and sanitation drainage and waste disposal upgraded. Transportation and storage capabilities also need upgrading to reduce losses and increase access to markets,
(i) Women traders must have access to trade information. This implies not only improved communications, but better access to education. Particularly rural women are unable to move around to find out about supply, demand and prices in home area markets national and international markets.
(j) Women already involved in Chambers of Commerce, manufacturer's, associations, exporter associations and the like, or who already practise intra-African or external trade must be identified by national Governments and given every assistance to expand their market shares.
