BY BUSINESS EDITOR
MBABANE – The Africa Women Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF) has launched a USAID-funded ‘Enhanced Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Investment and Export Readiness.
This was done through a Digital Platform’ program to increase the investor, export readiness, and competitiveness of 100 SMEs in nine Southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia.
The program leverages the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a United States Trade Act that significantly enhances market access to the US for qualifying Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, and valid until 2025, to drive export trade for the SMEs. Priority industry sectors include Agriculture, Agro-processing, Textiles, and Apparels.
Worth noting, one of the challenges hindering MSMEs from acquiring financial assistance is the fact that they use personal accounts for their businesses.
A FinScope Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) survey was conducted by the Centre for Financial Inclusion (CFI), and it revealed that there were approximately 60 000 MSMEs in Eswatini.
At least 69 per cent of the MSMEs were discovered to be financially included; 86 per cent use personal accounts to run businesses and only 14 per cent use business accounts to run businesses.
MSMEs employ about 92 643 people, generating a monthly turnover of E92.5 million within the MSME sector only, and over 75 per cent are at the micro level.
A majority of the MSMEs were found to be at the micro level, and a majority of them did not have business accounts but used personal accounts to run their small enterprises, which in turn affected the need to have concise measures to address their needs.
The CFI chief executive officer (CEO), Nomcebo Hadebe, said MSMEs were imperative to the economy of Eswatini as they contribute to the gross domestic product (GDP).
“The contribution the sector makes to our national GDP is significant, and we can make it even more; some countries have recorded over 50 per cent contributions to GDP. It is key that we dedicate efforts as a country towards making this sector stronger and more resilient,” she added.
The CEO mentioned that the World Bank Global Financial Development Report acknowledges the important role financial inclusion plays in facilitating development, especially at the bottom of the pyramid and for the MSME sector in developing countries.
Objectives
The objectives of this new AWIEF program are to:
- Increase exports from the Southern African countries to South Africa.
- Increase exports from all the nine targeted Southern African countries to the United States, leveraging AGOA.
- Support firms seeking specific trade-related technology transfer (e.g. labelling, branding, laboratories).
- The program will help strengthen participants’ governance, regulatory compliance, and risk management capabilities.
Eligibility Criteria
- An SME registered and operating in one of these Southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia.
- Either already exporting or interested in exporting your products to South Africa and/or to the United States leveraging AGOA.
- Seeking to raise capital for business expansion and international trade.
- Priority industry sectors include: Agriculture, Agro-processing, Textiles and Apparel.
