It will take a whole chain of marketing facilitation and infrastructure to enable small and medium-sized businesses to make their mark on the single continental market, according to Dr. Fareed Arthur, Senior Technical Advisor and Head of the National AfCFTA Coordination Office.
“SMEs by their very nature, are small producers and they on their own, cannot make any difference on the single continental market,” he emphatically tells Single African Market.
He adds: “But if we have a market strategy where we have intermediaries, warehousing system that can collect and aggregate their produce and export them to the markets, then they could make an impact on the African market.”
With a market size of about 1.5billion, Dr. Arthur says that the AfCFTA provide a sustainable opportunity for small-sized industries to expand but it would take a guided approach.
He says trade promoters will have to pull together smaller businesses and encourage the bigger companies to outsource some of their production needs as it will create jobs and promote the agenda of accessing goods from the continent.
“AfCFTA is about opening up opportunities in markets and any producer is interested in markets. Small scale producers form an important link in the value chain; even the big companies depend on them for raw materials and other services in their line of production,” he indicates.
Dr. Arthur is of the view that unless Ghanaian businesses are empowered to take advantage of the economies of scale that the bigger market provides, they are not going to be competitive on the continental market.
“In order to take good advantage of the AfCFTA, we have to add value to our products and therefore there is the need for enhanced linkages between processors and producers, especially now that we have a bigger market,” he adds.
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