Posted on February, 20, 2019 at 09:43 am
The business community in Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Member States is set to benefit from €10 million kitty provided by the European Union to support increased private sector participation in regional and global value chains.
This follows the signing of a financing agreement between the EU and COMESA to implement the Regional Enterprise Competitiveness and Access to Markets Programme (RECAMP).
This programme which was signed at the beginning of the week in Lusaka, Zambia, is supported under the 11th European Development Fund.
The Secretary-General of COMESA Chileshe Kapwepwe and the Head of the EU Delegation to Zambia and COMESA, Ambassador Alessandro Mariani signed for their respective organizations.
The programme has two key result areas: the first is to ensure that competitiveness and market access of small and medium enterprise (SMEs) and other firms in the targeted value chains are sustainably enhanced.
Under this result, the programme will facilitate networking, access to knowledge, vital market information and support formal business linkages between SMEs, key regional suppliers and lead firms.
Further, it will Support more formalized governance structures in the value chains and enhance capacities of SMEs and other actors in adhering to sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) and technical standards (TBT) to comply with regional markets requirements.
Source: East Africa Business Week (EABW)