The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), yesterday in Port Harcourt, trained about 120 women drawn from the South South on entrepreneurship.
The Executive Director of NEPC , Mr. Olusegun Awolowo, in a keynote address presented at the event, said the objective of the training programme was to build capacity of women and business support organisations on export procedures and solutions.
He said the workshop was aimed at improving on the understanding of women entrepreneurs and business support organisations on the SheTrades initiative.
Mr. Awolowo who was represented by the Deputy Director of Trade Information Department of NEPC, Princess Estelle Igwe, said the ITC Empowering Women to Trade Programme sought to increase the participation of women entrepreneurs from developing countries in trade.
He said a recent ITC survey showed that women entrepreneurs owned and managed only one in five exporting firms.
He listed the obstacles preventing women from participating in international trade value chain to include cultural and regulatory barriers, limited access to productive resources, information networks, credit facilities and skill mismatch, saying that the Empowering Women to Trade Programme sought to address the unacceptable situation.
“In July 2016, the International Trade Centre launched the Nigeria Chapter of the SheTrades initiative in Abuja as part of ambitious global agenda to take on one million women from developing economies and economies in transition to the market by the year 2020.
“Of this target figure, Nigeria is expected to take at least 200,000 women to the international market,” he said.
He said that that NEPC has created ‘Women in Export Desk’ at the head office in Abuja, the regional and smart offices where issues relating to gender activities in trade are being handled.
