As part of efforts to empower women and youth-led businesses to take advantage of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) market to grow their businesses, selected businesses in the Ashanti Region have undergone training on regulatory and compliance requirements. The goal was to build their capacity to identify the challenges and opportunities for entering the African market. It also sought to make participants understand key provisions, protocols, and objectives of the AfCFTA, as well as the trade finance needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and also help them select the logistics that best meet their needs. They were also taken through AfCFTA Rules of Origin which determines the African origin of goods traded and ensures that the goods benefit from tariff reduction under the AfCFTA. With funding support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the National AfCFTA Coordination Office (NCO) put together the training to sharpen the readiness of participants to access the AfCF TA market. Officials from the AfCFTA NCO, who served as resource persons for the training took turns to engage the participants on various relevant topics on AfCFTA. Some of the topics included intra-African trade and opportunities provided by the AfCFTA, finding the right market for your product, choosing logistic options for export trade, building a strong brand for African markets, export trade financing, and utilising trade support services. Dr. Fareed Arthur, National Coordinator, AfCFTA NCO, said the AfCFTA agreement which covered several areas also had specific protocols for women and the youth which underscored the importance of inclusiveness. He said women and the youth were the biggest demographic groups in Africa, saying that Africa is about 70 per cent youth and 54 per cent women. 'Apart from that in most African countries, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises control about 60 to 70 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and it is the women and the youth who drive these industries,' he s tated. It is for that reason, according to him, that the UNDP had been supporting the NCO to sensitise such businesses on AfCFTA and that the training was a further step to encourage young entrepreneurs to explore opportunities in the AfCFTA market. He said the training also provided an opportunity to identify potentials that could be introduced to the African market. Dr Arthur identified the existence of non-tariff barriers and different national laws as some of the key challenges confronting the implementation of the AfCFTA, saying that those were some of the issues the agreement sought to address gradually. Source: Ghana News Agency