LocationsSix Countries, Shared Practices and a Stronger System of Support
August 24, 2026
Laura Kabedikabwe of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
In Gaborone, Botswana, practitioners supporting businesses across six African countries came together with a common challenge: how do you help more women and young entrepreneurs move from running businesses to being ready to trade across borders? Their answers reveal why strengthening regional trade starts not only with entrepreneurs, but also with the people and institutions supporting them.
For Laura Kabedikabwe of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that was one of the realizations she was taking home from Gaborone. She had come to the ECoWYERT Training of Trainers wanting to deepen her understanding of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and what it could mean for the businesses her organisation supports in the DRC. What stood out most was export readiness. “The most important thing I learned from these trainings is the export readiness,” Laura says. “The business must be ready through seven areas. We thought that having goods was sufficient. Not yet.” Having something to sell, she realised, is only the beginning.
“We can have those entrepreneurs, we can have the goods and so forth, [but] we need to teach them how to be ready for the exportation, and what are the requirements, and what are the AfCFTA requirements... and how to go through it so that they can be ready.” Her reflection gets to the heart of a challenge that surfaced repeatedly among participants who gathered in Gaborone from Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe from 17–19 August 2026. The opportunity of regional trade may be significant. But between having a business and accessing that opportunity are questions of formalisation, certification, market information, finance, packaging, pricing, production capacity, documentation and the ability to understand what a new market actually requires. And behind the entrepreneurs navigating those questions is another group whose capacity matters too: the organisations and people expected to support them.
Marcia Nkosi, Chairperson of the Greater Gaborone Women in Business Association
Before businesses can cross borders, they have to be ready
In Botswana, Marcia Nkosi, Chairperson of the Greater Gaborone Women in Business Association, has seen businesses participate in exhibitions without necessarily being sufficiently prepared for the opportunities those exhibitions might create. Her biggest takeaway from the training was therefore very practical. “The most important thing is we need to make sure that our businesses are export ready before we take them to any exhibition,” she says. “That is the most important, because that is the basic for everything that we get to do.” For Marcia, readiness begins at home.“If they can do it well locally, they can do it externally.” That means looking beyond the finished product to the business behind it. When she returns to her organisation, she already knows where she wants to begin.
“Immediately after this training, the tools that I will apply is profiling the members,” she says. By profiling, Marcia means understanding the businesses within the association more deeply: “Get to know who the members in our Women in Business Association are and what products are they dealing with, how many of them could possibly be export trading.” Her next step is equally concrete. “Have a checklist... develop a checklist that we will use to check for export readiness.” The intention is not simply to tell a business that regional markets exist. It is to understand whether that business is ready to enter them and, if not, what needs to change first.
Angela Chitamya, Zambia
In Zambia, Angela Chitamya is thinking along similar lines.
One of the things that stood out for her was the scale of market opportunities within Africa itself and the need for business support organisations to help SMEs understand where demand exists.She points to tools such as the Trade Map as a way to move from general statements about regional trade to specific market intelligence: where potential markets are, what they demand and how businesses can position their products.But the tool she plans to use immediately is an assessment tool.“The tool I will immediately apply to Zambia is the assessment tool,” Angela says.
Her approach begins with questions.“First, I will look at their products, whether they are certified, the standards, the quality, look at their management, look at their production process and systems…”She would also look at documentation and customs requirements.“This basic knowledge is very, very important to our SMEs to make them export ready.” The point is not simply to encourage businesses to export. It is to help them understand whether they are ready and what needs to happen before they cross that threshold.
Tatenda Machirori of Zimbabwe
“There is a need for us to really handhold our SMEs”
For Tatenda Machirori of Zimbabwe, the conversation about readiness raised another issue: businesses cannot always be expected to navigate that journey alone. “One of the most important things that I am taking away from this training is that there is a need for us to really handhold our SMEs, help them to build their businesses and take them to greater levels,” she says. “It’s very important to ensure that they will then have all the information, the skills, the technical know-how that they require to then be able to trade across the borders.” Tatenda works with SMEs to build their capacity and develop products that can eventually move across borders. She came to Gaborone because doing that effectively requires the people supporting businesses to understand AfCFTA and the realities of intra-African trade themselves.
Two parts of the training particularly stayed with her. The first was the responsibility of facilitators and trainers. “The important role that we need to play as facilitators and trainers [is] to ensure that enterprises are well-capacitated,” she says. The second was something businesses ultimately have to confront when entering another market: price. “Also costing for exports... is something that we need to make sure that our enterprises are not undervaluing their products or overvaluing their products for trade to happen.” For Tatenda, the value of gaining that knowledge is ultimately determined by whether she can transfer it. “This training has opened up more information for me, more skills gained and knowledge as well,” she says. “This is information that I can then go out and share with the women-led and youth-led enterprises that they would definitely benefit from as they're going about doing their businesses and developing for trade across borders.”
Solomon Engelbracht of South Africa's Department of Trade, Industry and Competition
Strengthening the people who provide the support
That multiplier effect is fundamental to a Training of Trainers. The women and young people building enterprises are at the centre of ECoWYERT, but the quality of support surrounding those businesses can influence how effectively they navigate the journey towards regional trade. For Solomon Engelbracht of South Africa's Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, that responsibility is already part of his work.
“As an official responsible for capacity building of youth, women and other companies in South Africa, it is within my responsibility to make sure that we acquire the knowledge that is needed,” he explains, “so that we can make sure that we go back home and capacitate those companies, so that they can create jobs and employ others and contribute to the economy of the country.” The training's approach to different levels of business development particularly resonated with him. For Solomon, businesses cannot all be supported in exactly the same way. A rural entrepreneur beginning to formalise a business is at a different stage from an established company preparing to export. The support has to recognise that progression. “The training itself was so informative in a sense that it first started by segmenting the different levels of groupings of companies,” he explains, so that women and young entrepreneurs can be progressively supported towards formalisation and, ultimately, exporting.
When Solomon returns to South Africa, his first action will therefore not be simply to repeat the training he received. “The first step right now is to come up with the appropriate training material so that we can better capacitate these companies,” he says. Then comes an important word: customise. “Customize the material so that it can make sense and be better understandable to both youth and the women, so that they can move from level one until level four and be ultimate exporters of the country.” The training, he says, has put him “in a better space” to apply what he has learned, capacitate enterprises and bring together the relevant institutions needed to support them. “We're looking forward in forming a good structure that will support both women and the youth.”
Dennis Choguya, Training Facilitator
A training manual is only the beginning
For Dennis Choguya, the training facilitator, that need for adaptation is essential.“For any training, any capacitation to be effective, it needs to be context-relevant,” he says.That means what was shared in Gaborone cannot simply be lifted from a training room and applied identically in six countries.“What we gave them was more like a skeleton,” Dennis explains. “They then need to adapt it to their various country situations.”The distinction matters.The barriers confronting an informal cross-border trader are not necessarily the same as those facing a small processor trying to meet certification requirements. A young person exploring entrepreneurship for the first time needs different support from an established enterprise looking for buyers in another African market.
And Botswana, the DRC, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe each have different institutional environments through which that support must travel. The role of the trainer, therefore, goes beyond knowing the material.
It is about knowing the people and businesses they support well enough to make that knowledge useful.
Then six countries started comparing notes
The learning in Gaborone did not travel in only one direction. Participants brought their own experiences into the room, and as those experiences met, assumptions began to shift. Laura admits that she initially thought some of the other countries would be significantly further ahead. “I was thinking other countries were better placed than mine,” she says, imagining that perhaps “they have those advanced tools.” But listening to participants from across the region revealed something else.“What I've realized is we still have to put effort together.”Walusungu Chibwe of Emerge Livelihoods in Malawi also recognised familiar challenges across the six countries, but she noticed differences in how countries were responding to them.“What I've learned from exchanging experiences with different participants from the training is that we do share similar challenges when it comes to cross-border trading,” he says. At the same time, some countries appeared to be further ahead in specific areas, whether access to information, platforms available to businesses or the systems used to organise support.
Walusungu Chibwe, Emerge Livelihoods, Malawi
One example stayed with her: Zimbabwe's approach to clustering SMEs into groups that can work together.“ There’s something that we can still learn from our colleagues,” Walusungu says. Angela noticed the same example. She describes learning about the ZimTrade cluster strategy, where SMEs producing similar products can be brought into clusters, aggregate what they produce and strengthen their ability to pursue export opportunities collectively. For Tatenda, however, the lesson from six countries was not that there was one model everyone should copy. It was almost the opposite. “There is always more than one way to assist SMEs and we should be able to adapt according to the areas that we are dealing with,” she says. Support for businesses in marginalised communities may need to look different from support delivered in urban centres. Those exchanges, Tatenda says, can help practitioners make better-informed decisions about how training is eventually delivered through ECoWYERT.
Solomon heard the same shared ambition beneath the different approaches. “Within the ecosystem of the six countries... there is a commonality in assisting both women and the youth,” he says. “The only difference is that our structure is very much different, but we are sharing the very same goal.”
Michael Sudarkasa, Chairman of Africa Business Group in South Africa
“Trade is about relationships and trust”
For Michael Sudarkasa, Chairman of Africa Business Group in South Africa, the connections created in Gaborone are not separate from the business of trade. They are part of it. “Trade is about relationships and trust,” he says.For Michael, one challenge is that young entrepreneurs can sometimes look far beyond the continent for opportunity before considering markets much closer to home. “When we think trade, often it's trade off the continent,” he says. A business might immediately ask whether its product can reach America, Europe or Asia rather than first considering Botswana, Zimbabwe or another market in the region. At the same time, many small businesses simply do not have the opportunity to travel around the region and see what markets exist. “So you have a limited perspective of what you can do, and so you just miss out,” Michael says. “Just across the border or just not that far away, there's opportunity.” This is why the relationships formed through ECoWYERT matter to him.
“UNDP and its partners, Mastercard Foundation, through this program, they've put us in a community.” And that community can extend beyond the people who were physically present in Gaborone. “Being able to then bring along the companies that we work with to engage with others in this community becomes a lot easier because of our reference point.” His conversations with colleagues also made him think more deliberately about where the gaps in regional markets might be. “The big thing that I've gotten from them is how do you segment the market and how do you identify where the gaps are, where we can actually trade,” he says.
Participants at the training in Gaborone
Turning connections into action
The relationships built in Gaborone were already becoming practical. Marcia plans to turn the contacts made across the six countries into a resource for the Women in Business Association in Botswana, creating a database that regional chairs can use when businesses need information or connections in other markets.
Walusungu sees similar potential for SMEs in Malawi. The regional network, combined with the tools introduced during the training, can help Emerge Livelihoods become a more reliable source of trade information—connecting businesses to the knowledge and resources they need to formalise, grow and explore regional markets.
Across the six countries, participants left with different priorities. Angela plans to use assessment tools to better understand whether enterprises are export-ready. Solomon wants to adapt the training materials to the needs of women and young entrepreneurs in South Africa. Tatenda plans to pass the knowledge and skills she gained on to the SMEs she supports, while Laura wants to help businesses understand what it actually takes to become export-ready.
For Michael, the next steps have already begun. “I've started putting together a list of things that I want to do in the next couple of weeks to follow up on this training,” he says. He is also realistic about what three days can achieve. “I don't think that a training is a magic wand, but at the same time, it creates exposure and opportunity.” For him, its value lies in what it triggers next: “It's meant to be catalytic. It's meant to inspire us to do more.”
The measure is what moves beyond the room
Ultimately, the measure of the training will be what happens after Gaborone. For participants, that could mean more SMEs formalising and trading across borders; more women and young entrepreneurs understanding export requirements; stronger links to markets and buyers; and business support organisations better equipped to guide enterprises through that journey. But Tatenda offers perhaps the simplest measure of success: “Success for me is not really measured by me getting this training, but being able to give this knowledge and information off to others.”
That is the multiplier behind the Training of Trainers: knowledge moving from the training room into institutions and networks, and from there to the women and young entrepreneurs working to grow their businesses and reach markets across Africa.
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.
