The UK said it significantly wants to uplift work on women’s economic empowerment by expanding the work and opportunities for women programs across Africa.
For this, it budgeted £6.1million.
It also declared a £3.5million fund for the expansion of the SheTrades program in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya.
Launched in Nigeria by the International Trade Centre in June 2018, the SheTrades in the Commonwealth Nigeria project aims to drive increased trade, productivity, and competitiveness for women entrepreneurs and women-owned companies to ensure that they play an active role in international trade.
It committed £2million for funding the extension of women’s economic empowerment work in Mozambique.
Others
The UK also promised to fund Nigeria and South Africa with £25 million to deliver new partnerships with Investment Promotion Agencies in these countries.
Also, £45million was set aside to deliver a new Digital Access Program in Nigeria, Kenya, and South-Africa.
This is to increase connectivity and digital skills of marginalised communities, build cyber security capacity and establish Tech Hubs to grow the local digital economy, and empower start-ups with the skills needed to expand globally.
Up to £30million was set aside to establish a new UK Centre for Cities and Infrastructure to enable African governments and city authorities to access expertise to improve how cities are planned, built and run.
An additional £15 million was declared to fund the provision of rapid response to tackle the barriers to better infrastructure and cities, through an extension to the cities and infrastructure for growth program.
It said it will ensure even closer collaboration with Egypt through a new UK-Egypt Joint Statement on economic cooperation.
In all, the UK said it would expand the Manufacturing Africa programme, which aims to generate hundreds of millions of pounds of new foreign direct investment in manufacturing, into West Africa.
