This study examines opportunities that e-commerce growth can bring to support women economic and social empowerment in Africa. E-commerce potential to promote trade, integration and development in Africa, is increasingly getting recognised. African Governments have been active in developing strategies and policies to harness this potential. At the same time, challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are multi-layered and formidable.
This study examines opportunities that ecommerce growth can bring to support women economic and social empowerment in Africa. E-commerce potential to promote trade, integration and development in Africa, is increasingly getting recognised. African Governments have been active in developing strategies and policies to harness this potential. At the same time, challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are multi-layered and formidable.
After a substantive introduction, this study, therefore, starts by exploring key ecommerce gender related challenges in Africa. The main aim is to reveal how mainstreaming gender lens into key ecommerce related policies can contribute to eliminating barriers to the establishment and growth of women-led digital businesses across the continent. The study then gives an overview of existing gender normative frameworks at the continental and regional levels and attempts to analyse the extent to which those contributed to gender mainstreaming in policy making.
A key finding of the study is the recently adopted gender and e-commerce related policies and strategies by the African Union and a number of African Regional Economic Communities (RECs),particularly SADC. Through these policies and strategies, the gender mainstreaming ambition has been significantly raised, moving from gender neutral policies to gender transformative and holistic policies.
Finally, the study looks at key national level interventions to address e-commerce related challenges and brings examples of how those have been implemented in various African countries. With this panoramic approach the study contributes to promoting synergies across continental, regional and national interventions and highlights key success stories and lessons learned in gender mainstreaming in e-commerce terms. The study concludes with some key recommendations, particularly directed at African policy makers and negotiators as they prepare for the third phase of AfCFTA which will include an E-Commerce Protocol.