Professor Jumoke Oduwole, a 2013 Tutu Fellow, and Ada Osakwe, a 2014 Tutu Fellow, are among 20 contributors to the UNDP in Africa’s The Futures Report: Making the AfCFTA Work for Women and Youth.
AfCFTA - or, the Agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area is a legal instrument – among the African Union Member States to create a single market. This report argues that the AfCFTA represents much more: “on the one hand, it is a significant milestone on the journey to African integration and development. On the other hand, it is a catalyst for new ways of doing business, producing, working and trading within Africa and with the rest of the world.”
This report centres the voices of Africa’s producers, traders, policy officials and regulators in understanding the narrative about the promise of the AfCFTA. Under the Agreement, African Union Member States, now also AfCFTA State parties, explicitly seek to achieve gender equality and enhance the export capacity of women and youth. The Futures Report presents opportunities in the AfCFTA, as pursued by women and youth entrepreneurs and business owners, and discusses ongoing efforts by Governments and development institutions to ensure that these groups derive maximum benefit from the Agreement. It also puts forward policy actions to enable the AfCFTA to work to the greatest advantage of Africa’s women and youth.
Jumoke is a respected global thought leader in her field - an academic, government advisor, and advocate. She is a Special Adviser to the President of Nigeria on Ease of Doing Business. Ada is the Founder and Chief Executive of Agrolay Ventures, an investment firm targeting early-stage agribusiness and food-related companies and projects in Africa. She is also the founder of Nuli Juice, a farm-to-table restaurant chain in Nigeria that works to create markets for smallholder farmers.
There is more on the report at the UNDP website and a PDF of the report can be downloaded there, too.
Report