WBIN UN, WTO to link 1m women to markets by 2020 – Envoy

The International Trade Centre, which is the joint agency of the United Nations ( UN) Conference on Trade and Development and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), plans to link one million Nigerian women entrepreneurs to markets by 2020.

This was disclosed by the Executive Director of the centre, Mr. Arancha Gonzalez, during a meeting organised by the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) in Abuja recently.

Gonzalez said the Centre would create job opportunities in Nigeria for women and the youth as well as promote Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and link them to the international market.

She said the centre would help women sign business contracts, open businesses and produce goods for the international market.

“Financially we will provide fund to support them in order to reduce some problems in the country. We will make provision to train them before going into the international market,” she assured.

The Executive Director of the NEPC, Mr. Olusegun Awolowo, said the present administration has set a target for the country to connect 200,000 women to the global business in 2020.

Awolowo said since women constitute 50 percent of SMEs owners in the country, the council would work with the SMEs and scale up their growth towards producing for export.

The NEPC boss said his council has been working hard to solve the problems of access to finance confronting women in business.