By Pride Sakupwanya
Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Minister Sithembiso Nyoni has vowed to empower and promote women through programs that provide growth and sustainability of female led businesses.
Speaking at the launch of women empowerment summit and expo in partnership with National Economic Consultative forum, Nyoni said the idea of the summit is to address challenges affecting Zimbabwean women and realizing opportunities in different spheres.
“The summit’s broad objective is to deliberate on challenges and opportunities affecting Zimbabwean women and to recommend interventions to promote the growth of sustainable female led or female owned businesses in order to leave no one and no place behind in the process of development” said Minister Nyoni
She said there is need for women’s work space to help deal with marketing challenges and also moving away from the notion of vendor shacks.
“As a ministry we are saying we now want production and market centres, when these are provided there has to be production at the back and a market place at the front where they can sell their wares.
“We are also looking into the inner city where work spaces have been abandoned and acquired by foreigners and we want to negotiate for our people also to benefit from that”. Minister Nyoni said.
She said the summit and expo will be an information sharing opportunity for women from different sectors of the economy
“The objective of the summit provide a platform for a technical discussion on challenges and opportunities for women in business in Zimbabwe. To facilitate knowledge exchange on how to empower women in Zimbabwe” she said
