Zimtrade, Empretec empower women

This project is mainly concentrated on educating and training women on entrepreneurship and skills to successfully venture into the export market as a way of empowering women in business.
Empretec provided training on entrepreneurship while ZimTrade covered the export marketing training programme.
In an interview, the regional manager of ZimTrade Mr Similo Nkala said this was a way of supporting small businesses as well as improving trade in Zimbabwe by exporting their products.
“This project is meant to empower women so that they can take advantage of the skills they have to create their own internationally recognised businesses.
“We will also give them knowledge on how to market their own products internationally rather than depending on tourists that frequent the country,” he said.
He said what was hindering growth was lack of business planning and understanding of the market which is the reason why they came to the aid of women in arts and craft.
“Some of these women were paying some people to come up with business plans for them so we are teaching them how to create business plans because in business a person has to come up with his or her own business plan.
“Also market research comes into play as one has to know the market they will be supplying so that they come up with ideal products for different places because cultures are diverse hence different products mean different things,” Mr Nkala said.
He said this sector also dealt a lot with e-commerce hence the need to impart knowledge on technology to the women.
“This programme also targets to encourage businesspeople to consider e-commerce whereby they can sell their products online worldwide hence preventing unnecessary travel costs.
“Many countries are now doing business online and it’s high time grassroot businesses adopt the same culture also.”
He said if projects like these were taken seriously, they could help generate the much needed foreign currency into the local economy hence help small businesses also have their own funding as the country was not liquid.
“Small businesses are always the engine of a growing economy hence the need to support them.
“At the end of the training programme, we participants are expected to gain knowledge on how to come up with a business plan which will guide them in the day-to-day running of their businesses,” Mr Nkala said.
According to him another challenge this sector was faced with was the export documentation processes and procedures.
“The issue of registering under bilateral and regional trade agreements such as Sadc and Comesa will be explained in detail during the training workshop so that the women understand that they can export their products duty free or at reduced rates.
“After training, the participants must be able to come up with promotional strategies for their target market as well as align with the international standardisation of products,” he said.
The training programme targets three regions namely Masvingo, Matabeleland and Manicaland covering modules such as export business plan, export market research, information technology, export documentation, trade agreements and total quality concepts.
“We are planning on a regional fare where we will organise the participation of selected trainees at one place,” Mr Nkala said.