Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA) for the Informal Sector: A cross Lab experiment on sensemaking and collaboration
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
The AfCFTA is the largest free-trade agreement in the world with a 1.2 billion-person market and a combined GDP of about 2.5 trillion U$D. The focus of African Continental Free Trade Agreement’s primary focus is to increase intra-African trade by promoting free movement of goods and tariff-free trade. In order to provide support for informal traders in Eastern and Southern Africa, the Lab seeks to embark on a cross-lab project to help decrease gender-specific obstacles in Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Angola. Prioritising women's empowerment will help maintain and improve the informal trade sector and contribute to poverty reduction. It is unclear how the African Continental Free Trade Agreement will affect these groups as trade is adjusted; however, an increased focus on local trade and easier trade routes will likely facilitate trade for everyone involved. Since informal trade struggles with the same main issues as formal trade, making trade more accessible in the formal sector can create positive spillovers.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
Infrastructure and trade have a disproportionate effect on the informal sector and in particular for marginalized groups such as women and youth. Big businesses often avoid trading with rural areas due to high transportation costs, so instead these areas rely on informal trade for food, clothing and other commodities. Furthermore, ICBT provides a vital source of income to individuals who are often low-income or low-skilled. According to the Africa Economic Brief, studies estimate the average value of informal cross border trade to be 17.6 billion dollars per year in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).It will be vital to explore this challenge in terms of reducing taxes, transport times, and an increase in market competition.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
informal-cross-border-trade-survey-nsa-september-2015.pdf (tralac.org)
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement opens Africa up to free trade and, if facilitated effectively, it will have enormous positive implications for Africa’s economy. The Accelerator Labs are well positioned to work across countries and Labs. They will actively map the current ecosystem of issues and challenges as well as the grassroots solutions which the women have developed, giving the work of the labs and study into this field a unique angle.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
SADC AccLabs: Working out loud for AfCFTA's women in the informal sector.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Accelerator Labs Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Angola
What sector does our partner belong to?
United Nations
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
All four AccLabs will collaborate by sharing and documenting challenges, lessons learnt through an RBA Policy / position paper in 2023
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
Yes
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
How might we test the contextual nature of the operational, institutional, legal and trade policy environment under the AfCFTA? How might we understand the challenges experienced by women in the informal secotor to allow commercially meaningful trading under the AfCFTA?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Explore, Test
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
If women are excluded from the services economy, then a potential 50% of the available workforce is excluded with all the negative impacts on labour force productivity and drivers of change within the economy. There are many factors which could potentially hamper female participation. These include a lack of access to education, cultural norms, and a lack of economic activity diversity. As social and economic activities increase, overall economic efficiency increases which decreases gender gaps in terms of human capital. This directly leads to higher productivity of women in the labour force and will increase the sectoral share of female participation across the different sectors of the economy. The use of collective intelligence, data ethnography, systems thinking and community asset mapping will provide an unusual approach which deviates from the usual econometric approaches used to study informal cross-border trade.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Please see response in usage of methods above.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
The Ministries of Trade in the respective countries, Gender, the women informal vendors
END OF ACTION LEARNING PLAN: Thank you! The form saves automatically and your submission has been recorded. You may now exit this window.
1No poverty
5Gender equality
8Decent work and economic growth
Comments
Log in to add a comment or reply.