ITC - International Trade Centre

Published purpose

This project aims to improve cooperation and coherence across three African Regional Economic Communities (RECs): ECOWAS-Economic Community of West African States, ECCAS-Economic Community of Central African States, and COMESA-Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. The project focuses on regional trade development by enhancing the capacity of, and certifying, 100 African trainers in a range of trade development tools; training REC staff on the assessment of export potential; developing 15 regionally-based trade support networks; and engaging 150 trade support organizations in a trade information network. The project also trains and provides advisory services to 900 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in 15 countries, and is designed to ultimately increase the export sales of the participating SMEs by 20%. Also, ACCESS!, an important project component, raises the export readiness of women entrepreneurs-exporters in a selected number of countries.