AGRA has launched the VALUE4HER platform in Abidjan, aimed at strengthening women-led agribusinesses. The initiative notably aims to facilitate their access to financing, commercial opportunities, and technologies, with the ambition of mobilizing an initial cohort of at least 500 Ivorian enterprises.
Ivorian women entrepreneurs in the agribusiness sector now have a new instrument to develop their activities and access more economic opportunities. Indeed, AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, officially launched its VALUE4HER program this 14 of October in Abidjan, a continental platform designed to support Ivorian agripreneurs.
Through this initiative, the organization intends to remove several obstacles these enterprises face, particularly difficulties in accessing financing, seeking commercial opportunities, adopting adapted technologies, and the lack of professional networks. The program aims to connect more than 17 000 women-led agribusinesses across the continent.
For Côte d'Ivoire, where women are involved at various levels of agricultural value chains, from production to processing and marketing, the challenge is to better convert their presence in the sector into economic growth opportunities. See also - Côte d'Ivoire: AGRA to launch VALUE4HER to connect agripreneurs to financing and more than 17 000 enterprises in Africa Nana Amoah, Director of Gender, Youth, and Inclusion at AGRA, explained that the choice of Côte d'Ivoire is based in particular on the importance of its agricultural economy and the decisive role of women in food crop sectors.
She called on all women entrepreneurs to adopt the platform, in order to benefit from support aimed at promoting their financial autonomy and contributing to the country's food self-sufficiency. The launch of VALUE4HER in Côte d'Ivoire thus opens a new phase of mobilizing local entrepreneurs, with the ambition of fostering the emergence of enterprises capable of scaling, processing more agricultural products, and conquering new markets.
For his part, the representative of the Ivorian Minister Delegate in charge of Food Production, Chief of Staff Lucien Diby N'Guessan, urged women entrepreneurs to take ownership of the platform. He also called on financial institutions to offer products corresponding to their needs and on buyers to build sustainable commercial relationships with them.
This mobilization is critical to translating the program's objectives into economic results. Registration on a platform is indeed a first step.
Effective access to credit, the signing of commercial contracts, and the increase in production capacity will be important indicators for assessing the impact of the initiative. The representative of the Ivorian Ministry of Women, Family, and Children, Félicité Koutouan, advocated for increased mobilization of economic actors, financial institutions, technical and financial partners, and professional organizations.
The objective is to create a more favorable environment for the development of women-led enterprises and to support the emergence of new champions of agri-processing in Côte d'Ivoire. Facilitating access to financing and markets.
The VALUE4HER program relies on several complementary levers intended to improve the competitiveness of women-led enterprises. It notably provides support for structuring activities, strengthening entrepreneurial capacities, and supporting their development.
Access to markets constitutes another central axis. The platform aims to facilitate the networking of entrepreneurs with buyers, processors, and distributors to enable them to broaden their outlets and forge more sustainable commercial relationships.
Financing is also among the priorities. By facilitating contacts with financial institutions and promoting the identification of products adapted to business needs, VALUE4HER intends to contribute to reducing the financial constraints that can hinder their development.
Access to technology and the networking of entrepreneurs complete this mechanism. The program also provides an advocacy component intended to make the voices of women heard more effectively in the agribusiness ecosystem and in decisions that influence the development of sectors.
For AGRA, this involves proposing a framework allowing entrepreneurs to overcome difficulties related to the structuring of their activities and to access...