LocationsFor ECoWYERT, the three days in Gaborone represented an important step towards turning programme ambitions into practical support on the ground.
Beyond the Training Room: Building the Capacity to Turn Regional Trade Opportunities into Business Growth
August 22, 2026
Participants from trade promotion agencies and business support organisations across Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe
UNDP/Rejoice Emmanuel
How do you equip women and young entrepreneurs across six countries with the practical skills they need to build stronger businesses and access regional markets? Part of the answer lies not only in who receives the support, but in who is equipped to deliver it. For the Enhancing Capacities of Women and Youth-Led Enterprises for Regional Trade (ECoWYERT) Program, this distinction matters. Supporting an entrepreneur through one training can make a difference. But building the capacity of the institutions and trainers who will continue working with entrepreneurs has the potential to extend that difference much further.
That thinking was at the heart of the ECoWYERT Training of Trainers held in Gaborone, Botswana, from 17–19 August 2026. Participants from trade promotion agencies and business support organisations across Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe came together not simply to learn about business development and regional trade, but to strengthen their ability to transfer that knowledge to the women and young entrepreneurs they support.
For ECoWYERT, the three days in Gaborone represented an important step towards turning programme ambitions into practical support on the ground.
Why train the trainers?
The journey from having a business idea to trading successfully across borders is rarely straightforward.
For an aspiring entrepreneur, the immediate challenge may be understanding how to turn an idea or agricultural activity into a viable business. For an informal trader, it may be registration, record keeping or understanding how to cross a border formally. A growing enterprise may need better financial management, market intelligence or digital tools. A more established business may be ready to export but still need to understand packaging requirements, export costing, logistics or how to identify the right market.
The support required therefore changes as the entrepreneur and the business evolve.
This is why ECoWYERT's approach to capacity development extends beyond entrepreneurs themselves. It also requires strengthening the people and institutions expected to guide businesses through these different stages. Trade promotion agencies and business support organisations already occupy an important space within national enterprise ecosystems. They interact with businesses, provide information and technical support, connect entrepreneurs to opportunities and critically, understand many of the challenges enterprises encounter in their respective markets.
Strengthening their capacity can therefore create a multiplier effect.
Participants at the training in Gaborone
UNDP/Rejoice Emmanuel
Preparing trainers for the realities businesses face
Regional trade can sound distant when viewed from the perspective of a small business trying to keep records, find customers or determine the right price for a product.
The training in Gaborone sought to close that distance.
Rather than treating regional trade as a standalone technical subject, the programme connected it to the everyday fundamentals of building and running a viable business.
Participants explored business registration and formalisation, business planning and the development of a clear value proposition. These are foundations that can help enterprises move from informal or early-stage activity towards more structured operations.
The focus extended into export readiness: understanding markets, preparing appropriate documentation and packaging, costing products for export, financing orders and identifying opportunities in regional markets.
These are practical considerations. A business may have a strong product, for example, but without knowing the full cost of getting it to another market, it can price incorrectly. An entrepreneur may secure an order but struggle to finance production. A business may be ready to expand but lack the documentation, packaging or market information needed to meet buyer and border requirements.
The training also addressed how businesses reach customers.
Digital skills and online selling, competitor analysis, export market opportunity analysis, effective participation in trade exhibitions, e-commerce and digital payment platforms formed part of a wider conversation about connecting businesses to markets.
For enterprises preparing to operate at greater scale, participants explored logistics, supply chain management and operational efficiency. Together, these areas reflected a central reality: being ready for regional trade cannot be acheive through one skill. It is the combination of many business capabilities working together.
Making regional trade more inclusive
But business skills alone are not enough. If ECoWYERT is to reach women and young people with different circumstances and starting points, the way support is delivered matters as much as the content itself. Gender, safeguarding, inclusion and accessibility were therefore integrated into the training, recognising the need for facilitators to consider the experiences of young rural women, displaced persons and persons with disabilities when designing and delivering support.
The programme therefore included additional sessions with dedicated focus on cross-border traders. Participants examined the difference between formal border crossings and informal routes, regulatory compliance, financial management, business partnerships, trading collectively and formalisation for growth. The discussion also recognised challenges such as sexual harassment and corruption at borders. This was important because strengthening regional trade participation is not simply about telling entrepreneurs that opportunities exist. It requires understanding the barriers that can prevent them from accessing those opportunities safely, formally and sustainably.
If SMEs do not have the right documents, they face a lot of non-tariff barriers that can hinder their progress or the growth in businesses. They don't have enough information on how to navigate the borders. The knowledge that I have gained within these three days will help us position ourselves to be the go-to experts when it comes to trade. When SMEs are looking for information... we will be the ones that will provide that information.” — Walusungu Chibwe, Emerge Livelihoods, Malawi
Walusungu Chibwe, Emerge Livelihoods, Malawi
UNDP/Rejoice Emmanuel
Six countries, different experiences, shared challenges
Bringing participants from six countries into the same room added another dimension to the training. The business environment in Botswana is not identical to that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An entrepreneur in Malawi may encounter different market conditions from one in South Africa, Zambia or Zimbabwe. Yet many MSMEs face familiar questions: How do I formalise? How do I find finance? How do I identify a new market? What documentation do I need? How do I compete? How do I move from selling locally to trading across a border?
“The ZimTrade have got a cluster strategy where they are bringing SMEs that have same products into clusters, and then they put together their products and take them for exports.”
— Angela Chitamya, Zambia
The Training of Trainers created space for participants to compare those realities. Through peer-learning discussions, participants examined challenges facing MSMEs in their countries and exchanged experiences on how institutions respond to them. That cross-country learning is significant for a regional program. It creates an opportunity for trainers to look beyond a single national experience and consider which challenges are shared, which solutions may be adaptable and where approaches need to remain specific to local contexts.
Over time, such relationships could also contribute to something larger: a community of practitioners across the six countries who can continue exchanging knowledge about enterprise development, and regional trade and even collaborate on trade opportunities That potential will depend on what happens beyond the training itself.
Angela Chitamya, Zambia
UNDP/Rejoice Emmanuel
The real test begins after Gaborone
This brings ECoWYERT to perhaps the most important question: what happens next? The training itself has equipped participants with knowledge, exposed them to experiences from other countries and given them opportunities to practise delivering programme content.
But those are immediate outputs. The longer-term impact is still ahead. As participants return to their trade promotion agencies and business support organisations, the critical question will be how the knowledge and approaches developed in Gaborone are adapted to local contexts and cascaded to entrepreneurs in their respective countries.
Effective trainers will therefore need to do more than repeat what they learned in Botswana. They will need to translate it, contextualise it and make it useful. Going forward, attention will shift to how this capacity is institutionalized, adapted by trainers, and cascaded to ECoWYERT beneficiaries.
About ECoWYERT
The Enhancing Capacities of Women and Youth-Led Enterprises for Regional Trade (ECoWYERT) Program is a five-year, multi-country initiative designed to facilitate participation of women and youth-led enterprises in regional trade under the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). This will be done through capacity-building, access to finance and ecosystem strengthening. In partnership with the Mastercard Foundation and led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the program will be co-implemented by the COMESA Federation of Women in Business (COMFWB), the Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA) and the Trade and Development Fund (TDF) across six countries: Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe from 2025 to 2030.
