CAIRO – UNIDO’s gender-sensitive cluster development and enterprise upgrading approaches boost women’s economic participation in Africa by fostering growth and promoting SMEs collaborations, bypassing some of the major issues faced by start-up businesses. 

On the 11th of November 2023, as part of activities marking the celebration of Africa Industrialization Week and the third Intra-African Trade Fair 2023 in Cairo, UNIDO and the African Union Commission jointly organized a side event to promote cluster development as an easily adaptable contributing to Africa’s industrialization and economic diversification and to the increase of women’s active participation in the countries’ economic development. This is strongly in line with the African Union’s SME Strategy and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The event focused on showcasing successful results from WACOMP Ghana cosmetics clusters and from Tunisia PAMPAT project, as well as from the ARAC Phase2 project. Lessons learnt and impact were presented to show the way to other African countries to best promote women's entrepreneurship and women's inclusion in the cosmetics sector through cluster development and collective upgrading. 

Among the impactful results, in Ghana the focus has been put on the development of 14 standards for shea butter and black soap-based cosmetics and the consequent strengthening of the laboratory analysts capacities to ensure proper testing to meet those standards, as well as the development, in partnership with the University of Development Studies (UDS), of improved roasters and the consequent impact on shea butter quality and yield, resulting on an increase in the revenue for women in rural communities in the North of Ghana. 

As for Tunisia, the main achievements of the PAMPAT project in terms of support to startups, development of new products, certifications, job creation, women empowerment and regional economic growth have been presented as well as the development of a new strategy for the cosmetic sector in collaboration with the private sector and the government.  

The ARAC project team presented the Trade and Quality (TRAQ) SME approach and how it supported 150 food processing SMEs on quality and export readiness in six Arab countries. Success stories and the upgrading journey of women-led businesses were presented as a model for scaling and replication.

Mr. Patrick Gilabert, Director and UNIDO Representative, Regional Office Hub in Egypt, highlighted in his opening remarks that “the promotion of inclusive socio-economic development and women-led businesses in a cluster environment is a central theme for UNIDO interventions”. He added that “Collaboration makes everything easier from joint sourcing to the joint promotion and from joint e-commerce to joint quality standardization and encourages new opportunities and trends that are beneficial for the development of the African cosmetics sector”.

Learn more about the IATF here: https://www.intrafricantradefair.com/en 

Address further enquiries: Mrs. Ebe Muschialli, UNIDO Industrial Development Expert (Email: e.muschialli@unido.org)