Enabling Environment
The Southern Africa Trade Hub engineers gender integration, environmental compliance and effective strategic outreach into all of its activities.Gender Integration
The Trade Hub 1) integrates the concerns, needs and interests of both women and men in all activities of the project, and 2) designs and implements specific activities explicitly aimed to empower women. Gender integration activities include gender training for staff, a Gender Audit, persuasive communication and negotiation training for women’s cooperatives and associations, a Gender Information Pod at the Source Africa 2013 Trade Show, integration of gender considerations into agriculture grants, gender-sensitivity training for border agencies in Malawi, and promotion of the experiences of women beneficiaries in communications materials.
Compliance with Environmental Regulations
The Trade Hub ensures that all activities conform to environmental standards by:
- Promoting environmentally sound agricultural, industrial and clean energy practices that align with local laws and USAID's 22 CFR 216 regulations.
- Conducting annual environmental review of all activities and incorporate appropriate mitigation and monitoring measures, as needed; updating environmental guidance in the Grants Manual and related Application and Agreement templates.
- Conducting environmental screening of grant activities, preparing/submitting screening forms and monitoring plans for each grant.
Strategic Outreach
The Trade Hub seeks to be a source of quality information, useful policy analysis and expert knowledge sharing.
- The Trade Hub’s monthly newsletter, Hub Happenings, and website www.satradehub.org keep readers updated on the latest trade, agricultural, textiles & apparel and clean energy developments in the region, bringing stories and policy notes of interest to a wide readership.
- The Trade Hub fosters networking opportunities, continuing education and regional integration with annual events such as the Trade Facilitation Conference occurring each fall.
- For breaking posts and information, follow the Trade Hub on Twitter: http://twitter.com/satradehub and Facebook: www.facebook.com/SATradeHub.
As part of its efforts to motivate women entrepreneurs to grow their businesses by entering regional and international export markets, the Trade Hub participated in the 6th Namibia Women’s Summit in Windhoek, Namibia, from August 8-10, 2012. The Trade Hub facilitated sessions on: 1) successful participation in trade events; 2) preparing for the export market; and 3) training needs analysis.
The majority of barriers to trade in services are embedded in regulations. Poorly conceived and implemented rules and regulations impact negatively on the ability of service providers to efficiently supply their markets. The corollary of this inefficiency is the additional cost imposed on users of services and final consumers of the products.
In cooperation with the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC), SATH launched the Lesotho Investor Roadmap with a stakeholder validation workshop to discuss the findings and recommendations.
A Single Window is a crucial instrument for eliminating inefficiency and ineffectiveness in business and government procedures and document requirements along the international supply chain, reducing trade transaction costs, as well as improving border control, compliance and security. To support Botswana's commitment to improving its Doing Business ranking, SATH arranged for a team from Mozambique to share its experience in implementing an Single Electronic Window at its borders with private sector and government stakeholders. As a result, the Botswana Commissioner of Customs and Excise, on behalf of all stakeholders, confirmed that Botswana will now move forward with the development and implementation of the Single Electronic Window.
Activities