Zimbabwe Market Fair - Empowering Women and Youth

The Zimbabwe Market Fair Bulawayo Edition, which was officially opened on the 21st of September 2012, came to an end on the 22nd of September 2012 with louder calls to support women and youth entrepreneurs for broad based empowerment. The Fair attracted over 80 exhibitors from all over the country who brought their unique and innovative products for sale. ZUBO Trust and Zvishavane Water Project, both local NGOs, spearheaded the coordination and organisation of the fair with support from the Ministries of Women affairs, Gender and Community Development and Small to Medium Enterprises and cooperatives Development, Kunzwana Women's Association, Empretec Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Applied Art in Craft Association (ZAACA). The Fairs, being held once every quarter in three cities; Harare, Mutare and Bulawayo, are now a prominent event on the SMEs calendar in the country thanks to technical and financial support from UN Women and UNDP.

The Market Fair concept was conceived after realizing that at present in Zimbabwe, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly being managed by women, girls and youth. These enterprises, however, tend to mainly concentrate on less productive, less profitable livelihoods activities. Additionally, women and youth often experience limited access to business development services such as market information, market space, sub-contracting, packaging and marketing promotion. Existing marketing promotion activities and services are not sufficiently considering the needs of rural and urban women and youth producing high quality Zimbabwean products.

Exhibition tent one

Moreover, while women and youth in Zimbabwe are increasingly engaged in informal and formal trade their market access remains limited largely due to a lack of capacity to coordinate and to promote their products. As a consequence, these groups often engage in informal cross-border trading which has the effect of compromising profit and hindering the sustainability of their business as well as limiting their ability to actively contribute and participate in the formal economy. Hence, the need to create market platforms. Being held under the theme "Linking women and Youth to Sustainable Markets", Zimbabwe Market Fair has proved to be such a platform.