At the AWEC Alumnae Network’s Cross Border Trade Summit, which connected women entrepreneurs from South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and Lesotho, I spoke about a subject close to my heart: moving from policy to purchase order.
Drawing on my experience in procurement, strategic sourcing and supply chain management, I explored how regional trade opportunities become actual business. How does an entrepreneur move from knowing that a neighbouring market is open to securing a customer, delivering an order and receiving payment?
The discussion brought three issues into focus: access to information, safety and trust.
These issues deserve a central place in our conversations about regional trade. They influence whether women-owned businesses can pursue an opportunity in the first place—and whether that opportunity develops into a sustainable commercial relationship.
Regional opportunity must become accessible business
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) provides a framework for deeper regional trade. Its Protocol on Trade requires member states to eliminate existing non-tariff barriers and refrain from introducing new ones. SADC also recognises that these barriers continue to restrict trade within the region. [1]
For a business owner, a barrier becomes tangible when it affects a transaction: an unclear requirement delays a shipment, an unexpected charge changes the margin, or an unpredictable process makes a delivery commitment difficult to honour.
Some requirements serve legitimate purposes, including protecting health, safety and product quality. Businesses need to understand and meet them. Other obstacles arise from unnecessary complexity, inconsistent administration or poor access to information. These need institutional attention.
Alongside those obstacles sit broader conditions that determine participation, including personal safety and commercial trust. While these are not all non-tariff barriers in the technical sense, they belong in any practical discussion of making regional trade work.
Access to information is a condition for participation
One of the important points raised at the summit was that access to information is uneven across the region. Participants highlighted that businesses in other SADC countries do not necessarily have the same access to trade information available in South Africa.
That observation should prompt us to examine the experience of an entrepreneur trying to enter a neighbouring market.
Where does she find the applicable import requirements? How does she confirm which certificates are needed? Can she establish the official charges before quoting? Who can clarify conflicting advice?
When reliable answers are difficult to obtain, uncertainty enters the business decision. A supplier may struggle to calculate the delivered price, prepare the correct documents or promise a realistic delivery date. She may also become dependent on intermediaries whose advice she cannot easily verify.
South Africa itself still has work to do. A World Bank study found that women traders reported difficulties with the usability of official information channels, and fewer women than men found regulations and procedures easy to understand. This reinforces the need to assess information by how effectively businesses can use it. [2]
For women-owned businesses, a practical starting point is to select a specific product and destination market, then build a checklist of requirements verified with the relevant authorities. Business networks can help identify useful contacts and share experience.
Public institutions must make that verification easier. Clear guidance, accessible enquiry points, relevant languages and timely updates should form part of the infrastructure of regional trade.
Safety shapes the decision to trade
Safety for women moving around the region was another important concern raised at the meeting.
Cross-border business can require travel to meet a prospective buyer, inspect goods, visit a supplier or resolve a delivery problem. For some entrepreneurs, it also involves accompanying goods through border processes.
The ability to undertake those activities safely affects whether an opportunity is worth pursuing.
When we encourage women to expand into regional markets, we should also ask whether the conditions support their movement. Are transport arrangements dependable? Are border facilities suitable? Can a woman identify a trusted contact if something goes wrong? Are complaint channels accessible and responsive?
Businesses can take practical precautions: verify meeting locations and counterparties, plan travel carefully, use established service providers and maintain clear communication with trusted contacts.
Those precautions must be supported by safer public environments, accountable institutions and effective responses to harassment or intimidation. Personal safety is part of enabling women’s economic participation.
Trust must be built into the transaction
I also raised the importance of trust.
An entrepreneur may identify demand in another SADC country and still hesitate to proceed because she cannot verify the buyer or establish how payment will be secured. A buyer may be interested in a regional supplier but remain uncertain about quality, capacity or delivery reliability.
Both concerns are commercially significant.
From a procurement perspective, supplier selection involves assessing whether a business can fulfil its commitments. From the supplier’s perspective, accepting an order requires confidence that the customer will honour theirs.
Networks such as AWEC can help create trusted introductions. The next step is to support that relationship with evidence: business verification, references, samples where appropriate, clear specifications and written commercial terms.
Where viable, a manageable initial order can allow both parties to test the relationship before increasing their commitments. Consistent communication, delivery performance and payment then create the basis for repeat business.
Trust grows through a process in which both parties can see that commitments are being honoured.
Turning preparation into a purchase order
For women-owned businesses seeking regional customers, these themes translate into several practical actions.
Start with demand. Identify a buyer with a specific requirement and understand how that buyer sources and approves suppliers.
Confirm market requirements before committing to a quotation. Establish the documents, permits, standards and approvals that apply to the particular product and destination.
Build a realistic delivered price. Include transport, clearance, applicable taxes and duties, insurance, documentation and any required testing. Agree who is responsible for each stage of delivery.
Check any proposed preferential tariff treatment carefully. Eligibility depends on the applicable rules, including product-specific rules of origin; dispatching goods from a SADC country alone does not establish qualification. [3]
Assess the cash-flow implications. A purchase order creates a commitment to perform, and the business needs a workable way to fund production and delivery before payment arrives.
Finally, document the agreement. Specifications, quantities, delivery responsibilities, payment terms and procedures for handling problems should be understood by both parties.
These steps help businesses manage uncertainty. They also give buyers greater confidence to place an order.
Barriers need a route to resolution
Preparation cannot resolve every obstacle. When businesses encounter unnecessary delays, unexplained requirements or other suspected non-tariff barriers, they need a formal way to raise them.
The mechanism at tradebarriers.org enables stakeholders to report barriers encountered in SADC, COMESA and EAC trade and monitor progress towards resolution. It provides a route for escalation, although an immediate solution is not guaranteed. [4]
Businesses should retain relevant documents and record what happened, where it occurred and how it affected the transaction. Women’s business networks and industry associations can help identify recurring problems and present collective evidence to the responsible authorities.
That collective voice matters. Repeated difficulties on a trading route should inform changes to the system.
A shared responsibility for regional trade
Women-owned businesses have a role in building their commercial readiness. Governments, border agencies, regional institutions and buyers have equally important responsibilities.
Trade information must be easier to find and understand. Procedures must be predictable. Women must be able to move safely. Buyers should communicate requirements clearly and examine whether their onboarding processes and payment terms allow capable regional suppliers to compete.
The AWEC discussion reinforced my view that regional integration should be assessed through the experience of the businesses expected to use it.
Can a woman entrepreneur obtain reliable information, assess a buyer, travel safely, deliver competitively and receive payment? Can she turn that first order into a lasting customer relationship?
For me, that is the practical test of moving from policy to purchase order—and of making regional trade work for women-owned businesses across SADC.