Increased Market Access 4 Women-Owned Small and Medium Enterprises -East African Women in Business Platform(EAWIB)

The increased market access for women owned SMEs will increase the value of women owned SMEs in EAC regional trade and build ion the work done in strategy 1 . The project will seek to achieve the following objectives a) Increase market access for women owned enterprises using technology as a major driver. Lack of market access continues to hinder women from participating in international trade. The project will facilitate regional and international linkages for the East African owned women businesses. The project will seek to profile women businesses in the region, conduct training on key areas where women lag behind such as packaging and branding, create a virtual market place for women entrepreneurs as well as conduct B2B linkage events where women can trade amongst themselves as well as meet large international buyers b) Improve the policy and regulatory environment for women in trade. The project will run very targeted advocacy campaigns issues that are best addressed at the regional level such as participation in the Common External Review process and lobbying for women’s access to government procurement opportunities across the region c) Strengthen the institutional capacity of EAWIBP to continue being the voice of East African women businesses at the regional level. This will involve hiring a programmes officer to support the market access activities and advocacy work as well as an ICT officer to support the virtual market place platform