Enhancing Export Readiness of Women and Youth-led MSMEs within the AfCFTA, Leveraging Digital Technologies

About this project

Despite its position as Africa’s largest economy, accounting for more than 15% of the continent’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and a population exceeding 200 million, Nigeria struggles to leverage its strengths to benefit from regional trade and integration. This challenge is evident in the significantly low intra-African trade volumes, which stood at only 4.5 percent in 2022. Harnessing the country’s immense potential will require the strengthening of local production value chains, policies, infrastructure, and adoption of digital technologies, especially for populations at risk of exclusion such as women and youth.The Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers to create a single market for goods and services within the continent and seeks to provide untapped opportunities for African economies to increase intra-regional trade by progressively eliminating 90% of tariffs on intra-regional trade, leading to a reduction in the cost of trade and improvement in competition and productivity. This is expected to yield improved incomes and drive economy growth. Nigeria stands to benefit from these opportunities by strengthening its trade capacity, boosting domestic production of competitive goods and services and prioritizing women and youth MSMEs as drivers of trade. The Agreement provides an opportunity to unlock growth and increase output in Nigeria’s untapped sectors such as tourism and fashion. In addition, it can lead to the transformation of other industries such as…

Goals

Sustainable Development Goals this project works towards

• 1No Poverty
• 8Decent Work and Economic Growth
• 12Responsible Consumption and Production
• 17Partnerships for the Goals

Published by

United Nations Development Programme · Multilateral

Countries

Nigeria

Sectors

Business policy and administrationResponsible business conductTrade policy and administrative management

Funded by

GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA, NGA-Office of the SSAP on SDGs, UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Implemented by

UNDP

Accountable

UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Published by United Nations Development Programme to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), last updated 5 Oct 2026 and imported automatically. IATI identifier: XM-DAC-41114-PROJECT-01002366.

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