Africa-Press – Eswatini. The COMESA Federation of Women in Business (COMFWB) Eswatini Chapter will this year source more funding from stakeholders and partners in order to provide relevant Technical support to more women and youth.
This is part of their 2024 plans as revealed by the National Chairperson Thandi Nxumalo who said they would be looking at the many different sectors wherein the youth and woman are actively involved and those that they want to grow.
She said they were looking upto their mother body Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and other development partners to assist them with funding.
Nxumalo said they will also boost their monitoring section to ensure that all ongoing projects are sustainable.
She said a lot of their members were focusing on agribusiness since COMESA had a program to support women and youth in this sector.
“The challenge is finances, hence we will make it our priority to secure more funding so that more businesses can benefit and grow the agri-business sector.
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We will try our best to reach out to all the women in the different constituencies around the country so that we raise awareness among them and the youth.
We will soon be arranging a meeting with members of parliament so that we brief them about COMFWB and how their electorate can be part of this and benefit,” said the former Manzini South Member of Parliament. She said parliament was one of the key structures and partners with whom they ought to partner with.
Nxumalo said they also had a number of stakeholders they hope would come on board with funding.
She said they have MoUs with organisations including the Youth Fund, World Food Program (WFP) and the Financial Inclusion and Cluster Development (FINCLUD) Project among others.
Nxumalo says they are forging a relationship with the FAO since a number of their members are in to agribusiness, adding that there are a number of potential stakeholders they will start working relations with, in an effort to assist more women get into business.
She said last year was fruitful in that they delivered in a number of areas which they had planned on.
“We assisted groups to be trained and registered under co-ops.
We currently house 35 women and youth business associations with a membership of 9 500.
We have held meetings with heads of our coops or groups so we know the challenges they face in their different coops
We signed an MOU with The Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund to increase the number of youth who get assistance from our projects,” she said.
The COMFWB chairperson said they also have Business Incubator for African Women Entrepreneurs (BIAWE) project which they will be capacitating this year to ensure the members involved can start operations.
“Two of your female entrepreneurs in the fields of vegetable and beef production value chains attended a regional conference on Food Processing in Rwanda.
We are also excited that the chapter has been included to be part of stakeholders to draft the national MSME policy.
part of the delegation to travel to Mozambique to forge and identify market opportunities for our local MSMEs, came from us.
This trip was sponsored by The International Trade Center and other delegates who were part of it are Eswatini Investment Promotion Authority (EIPA), The Ministry of Trade, The Ministry of Agriculture, and the Eswatini Revenue Services. Mozambique has plenty of business opportunities and through the assistance from the governmental and relevant private sectors a lot can be achieved by our MSMEs,” Nxumalo said.
She said as a chapter they were excited and applauded His Majesty King Mswati III for reappointing Manqoba Khumalo into the ministry of commerce because he understood and supported most of their projects, and hope some of the minister’s initiatives will continue to support and empower more women in business.
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“We began implementing the E3million beef production value chain project funded by COMESA and the EU, where we have trained 150 women who are in the feedlot business, cattle feed production and feed processing.
We also managed to give the 60 women in the crop production sector farm inputs to start producing yellow maize which is the main ingredient for the cattle feed.
COMFWB is hoping that all activities under this project will be implemented by March, so that we are able to request for yet another funding to support our women and youth groups,” she said.
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