• by IPS Correspondents (dakar)
• Saturday, November 19, 1994
• Inter Press Service

DAKAR, Nov 19 (IPS) - The woman in the conference centre exhibition hall is 65 years old and she has travelled from afar.

"In Lesotho there is no policy for the informal sector," she says referring to her homeland, thousands of kilometres away at the other end of the continent.

Guanyta Sekheca is a businesswoman. Her presence in the Senegalese capital this week, for a forum on women attended by non- governmental organisations (NGO's) showed that the economic and political darkness that is the outside world's image of Africa, is only part of the story.

In all over 450 African businesswomen attended the NGO Forum of the Fifth African Regional Conference on Women, held to prepare for the Fourth International Conference on Women and Development in Beijing in 1995.

The conference itself will be held here next week.

Wearing colourful tunics and scarves, dressed in the latest fashion and accessories, they were conspicuous in the hall. But this was no fashion show: ideas were shared and contacts established. African enterprise was promoted.

Under the theme 'Feminine Entrepreneurship', the women, in debates and workshops, enunciated familiar problems. Limited access to credit was cited. Problems with finding and penetrating export markets. Recipes were exchanged - but also notes on experiences. And a few contracts were signed as well.

The women traders of West Africa are legendary for their plumpness and vigour as much as the enterprise with which they seek to tread where political leaders only talk about going.

Economists recognise that they are the continent's real free traders. Although their activity is largely informal, their impact is not negligible.

But there are problems. Space on the informal market is becoming confined. Many previously grassroots women now flaunt their affluence, muscle out the people with whom they once shared space.

"Even the so-called rich people are also in the market where grassroots women are trying to make their life," says Sekheca. "That's why I'm here."

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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