Making Trade Work 4 Women in Rwanda - ProFemme

The Rwanda programme has recorded significant success from the strategy I women and trade project specifically in the establishment of the cooperatives. This project will therefore build on this success and replicate good business models and lessons learned in the establishment of cooperatives for WCBT and replicate this for other segments like urban traders. Despite the significant results achieved in the ProFemme project facilitating women cross border traders in Rwanda to trade through cooperatives, other women traders continue to trade in low volumes and low value commodities and services which reduces the profitability of their trade. In strategy Il, this project will have a stronger focus on increasing trade in higher value goods so as to increase the trade value of the targeted traders/SMEs by addressing challenges faced in specific sectors/ value chains. The project will replicate the lessons learnt while the target group will be expanded to cover small and medium women owned enterprises to access export markets. The project specifically seeks to achieve the objectives below: (i) Increase access to information and trade support services: Small business owners (predominantly women) state that the high tax burden in the formal sector forces them to operate informally. This is further demonstrated by the limited access to affordable finance for women traders. In 2011, 28.2% of women had bank accounts at formal financial institutions in comparison to 37.5% of men. Even where the Simplified Trade Regime is implemented, in order to benefit from the regime, an exporter must be VAT registered. Given that they trade informally, the majority are unable to meet this criterion. l The project will aim to provide capacity in terms of skills and knowledge to enable women in selected value chains to trade formally, improve access finance and markets. (ii)lncrease trade value for women: The Rwanda National Cross Border Trade Strategy confirms that men trade primarily in capital intensive goods (e.g. manufactured goods), while women trade in commodities with little or no value addition and are therefore disadvantaged as their returns on trade remain low. The project's objective is to support women traders to access high value markets through trading in clusters/cooperatives and other groupings that support consolidation of resources and collective bargaining for cost reduction.