JEDDAH, 27 May 2007 — The General Secretariat of the Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) is organizing a 5-day workshop for businesswomen in the 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to enhance their business in agro-products. The workshop dubbed “Marketing and Packaging of Agro-Products” will take place in Sudan on August 25-29 this year, under the patronage of Ali Ahmed Osman, state minister of industries.
Recognizing the importance of training, ICCI, an affiliate of OIC, has designed a comprehensive workshop for capacity building of women entrepreneurs in agro-products. The main objective of the workshop is to enable the participants to learn to improve their competitiveness and planning skills needed for developing sustainable businesses, marketing plans and especially new techniques of marketing agro-products through packaging.
In addition, the workshop would help enhance intra-trade and foster economic growth within and among the member countries in the agricultural sector by increasing exports of agro-products, raising awareness of the importance of added value and transferring technology in packaging of agro-products.
The workshop also aims to promote networking among the suppliers of agro-processing machinery and raw materials in the OIC member countries and provide training to trainers as well as establish business/technology incubators on agro-processing. “It is hoped that the workshop would provide hands-on experience to the participating businesswomen/entrepreneurs and promote the culture of entrepreneurship in the member countries,” Attiya Nawazish Ali, assistant secretary general for coordination at ICCI, said. “This would also help in the establishment of the First Sudanese Business/Technology Incubation Center with a multinational scope for transferring knowledge acquired from the workshop to entrepreneurs of other countries in the African region,” she told Arab News. Organizing this workshop in cooperation with ICCI is the Islamic Development Bank, UNDP’s Special Unit for South-South Cooperation, Sudanese Ministry of Industries, Sudanese Businesswomen Union and Sudanese Employers Federation.
To foster economic potentials of businesswomen in OIC Countries, ICCI has initiated several technical cooperation programs, including the organization of businesswomen forums and workshops. The second Businesswomen Forum of Islamic Counties was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in December 2006 in which the businesswomen discussed the importance of networking. Among the recommendations they made is having a web portal where they can network and post their project proposals. Informal consultations between the representatives of ICCI and the SU/SSC-UNDP led to the possibility of collaboration between the two organizations in developing innovative market-oriented facilities for online trading and partnership the businesswomen wanted.
Meanwhile, the ICCI in collaboration with the IDB is currently in the process of creating a web portal to serve as a network platform for the businesswomen and a statistical database.
“The problems businesswomen face in each region of the Islamic world is different, but by and large, the main issue is that they don’t know how to market their business. We are addressing the salient and most common restraints these women are facing: financing, lack of knowledge, marketing and management techniques and networking,” Ali said. The third Businesswomen Forum is scheduled to take place in October 2007 in Qatar.