Written by: Alexandre Larouche-Maltais, Article No. 82 [UNCTAD Transport and Trade Facilitation Newsletter N°93 - First Quarter 2022]
© Jan Hoffmann
In October and November 2021, UNCTAD, in collaboration with the Economic Community of Central Africa (ECCAS) Commission and with the financial support of the African Development Bank (AfDB), held an online training entitled "The gender perspective in trade facilitation reforms" for French-speaking Central African countries.
About 100 participants from the public and private sectors took part in the workshop with experts from UNCTAD, the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the Federation of Businesses of the Congo (Fédération des entreprises du Congo in French). This article reflects the debates during the webinars, as well as participants’ written contributions, highlighting the difficulties faced by women cross-border traders in Central Africa.
Who are women traders?
Women traders are numerous in Central Africa. They are often self-employed or run a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME), trading across borders through land border checkpoints, unofficial crossing points, or through border markets. They create jobs and reinvest their income in improving the livelihoods of their families and local communities.
In the subregion, many women earn their income from informal cross-border trade, characterized by small-scale, "subsistence" trading activities. Because these small-scale transactions add up, they account for a significant share of regional trade in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the range of 30% to 40%. It is estimated that between 70% and 80% of African informal traders are women. Although their commercial transactions fall outside the formal economy, they are widely permitted since they are a source of livelihood for families and contribute to the food security of the most fragile communities.
Major obstacles for women traders
Despite the essential role that women traders play, they face major obstacles at border crossings in Central Africa. They face time constraints that prevent them from fully engaging in international trade. Traditionally cast in the role of head of household, women traders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, struggle to reconcile the time needed to negotiate at the border and obtain customs clearance for their goods with the family burdens for which they are often responsible.
Access to trade information is another challenge. The lack of education about cross-border trade laws and procedures and the unavailability of information in local and indigenous languages spoken by women is a challenge. In Burundi, for example, some women traders will confuse in good faith the different types of duties and taxes that apply, including those on the origin of goods that affect preferential treatment. This leads to the risk of being fined or having prohibited or restricted goods confiscated. These penalties add to the cost of cross-border procedures for women traders and limit their profits.
Cultural barriers can also add additional hurdles for women traders. The weight of tradition, customs and prejudice against women can restrict their potential as entrepreneurs. Despite the 2016 abolishment of marital authorization for married women in the DRC, some customs officials still require a man’s written confirmation for women traders.[i] Thus, some traditions still limit the application of legislative advances in gender equality.
Four types of violence at the border
Even more worrying is the violence suffered by these women traders. Four distinct types of violence are observed on the various borders of Central Africa. The first type of violence reported by women is verbal, whereby they are subjected to insults, intimidation, harassment or threats. Studies show that such violence is widespread in Central Africa. Some 38% of women traders in the DRC, for example, report having been verbally abused by border officials.
In Gabon, the products imported by women traders are often perishable foods, such as bananas, avocados, and cassava. While transporting these goods to the capital Libreville, women are constantly subjected to controls at numerous checkpoints where intimidation and other abuses by customs authorities are committed. Women fear retaliation and prefer to comply with threats for fear that their goods will perish if they are delayed at the border any further.
The Tri-border region – where Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Cameroon share a border – is particularly conducive to cross-border trade and the presence of many informal women traders. Unfortunately, these commercial activities have led to problems of harassment at border crossings. Women traders report that some military and security forces take advantage of their vulnerabilities and non-compliance with the law and use their uniforms to subject women traders to abuses that they eventually accept.
‘Held-up’ at the border
The second type of violence that women traders suffer at the border is a direct consequence of verbal abuse. This violence has economic implications and a financial cost for women traders. It includes the inconsistent application of border rules, which encourage corruption, the arbitrary confiscation of goods by customs officers, or the theft of goods by other traders or third parties loitering near the border.
Because of their gender, women traders are perceived as "disrespectful and stubborn" by border officials if they question the paperwork. Sometimes they may have their goods seized and be forced to pay "unconventional fines" to get them back.
Although some women traders may proactively offer a bribe to customs officials to facilitate the passage of their goods, they are far more often the victims of such fraudulent practices. In the Republic of Congo, for example, women who are not well informed about all the laws governing trade are subject to "parafiscal charges" by certain dishonest officials who take advantage of the information imbalance. These taxes increase the cost of cross-border procedures and reduce the income of women traders without contributing to the state coffers.
In some cases, women traders are discriminated against in the way fees are calculated. At some border posts, particularly at the Beach Ngobila port of embarkation, which links Kinshasa and Brazzaville, customs officials frequently treat the personal luggage of women traders, such as handbags and the items inside, as goods subject to import duties.[ii] Recognizing the challenges associated with small-scale trade in women-dominated sectors, DRC authorities implemented a simplified tariff system in 2015 that includes a single rate on local products to facilitate small-scale cross-border trade.
Nevertheless, local private sector stakeholders note that this measure has not resolved the issue of multiple actors and the proliferation of legal and illegal taxes at the border.
Government officials are not always the perpetrators of these economic abuses. At border crossings with little movement, in remote areas where customs authorities have not installed agents on a permanent office, such as the Gasenyi-Mburi border between Burundi and Tanzania, con artists pose as government agents and take advantage of the situation to illegally collect money from women traders.
When women's lives are threatened
The third type of violence suffered by women traders is physical, including all acts of physical harm, such as when women are spat on or physically assaulted by individuals near the borders – sometimes to the point of death. Women traders who have to work in the evening, far from their homes, are sometimes victims of theft and physical violence.
The danger is even more acute near unregulated border crossings and on clandestine routes. In the Kongo Central region, many unregulated points of entry into Angola are used by informal women traders. These women, who often go to the market in Lufu, are exposed to insecurity, crime, theft and even rape. Even near legal crossing points, particularly the Lufu border crossing, there are no proper sanitary facilities for women, which makes them humiliatingly exposed and vulnerable.[iii]
Women traders are the primary victims of political instability and insecurity in parts of Central Africa. Armed groups threaten the safety of women traders near some border crossings between northeastern DRC and Uganda. Armed rebel groups in Ituri regularly burn truckloads of goods, injuring or killing civilians on the roads. In such a context, women avoid border travel for fear of physical violence and even death.
The last type of violence is sexual. It involves blackmail to obtain sexual favors, molestation, rape and attempted rape. This violence can be committed by customs officers, who are mostly men. According to the most recent data from the World Customs Organization, only 23% of customs personnel in Central and West Africa are women[iv].
Several women have complained about systematic searches by male inspectors at the Goma border post between the DRC and Rwanda. These searches are perceived by the women as groping that constitutes an act of indecent assault. [v] Rape is a major problem, especially on the eastern border of the DRC where several cases have been recorded. Women are forced to "let themselves be raped" after their goods have been confiscated.[vi]
However, women traders can also be victims of individuals who have nothing to do with government agencies. Women entrepreneurs living far from the borders may have to be away from their families for weeks at a time due to the poor state of the roads. In northern DRC, for example, women may have to travel for up to a month to retrieve their goods across the border, crossing unstable areas exposing them to sexual violence, including rape and even murder.
Conclusion
Women traders in Central Africa face serious and varied threats not only from officials, including customs officers, security forces and administrators but also from other traders, as well as from criminals and armed groups near the borders. In addition to this violence, they face other barriers to trade, including time constraints, high compliance costs, difficulties in accessing procedural information, legal discrimination and cultural barriers.
UNCTAD raises awareness among and advises Central African countries about how to integrate a gender perspective into the implementation of trade facilitation reforms to help remove these barriers for women traders. In addition, UNCTAD is building the capacity of members of national trade facilitation committees to better coordinate the implementation of the measures of the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement and address the challenges of women cross-border traders.
To view UNCTAD’s recommendations for integrating a gender perspective into trade facilitation reforms, see this policy brief.
Contact the author:
Alexandre Larouche-Maltais | Economic Affairs Officer, UNCTAD Trade Facilitation Section | [email protected]
This article was originally published in French.
[i] Previously, marital authorization was required for women traders wishing to travel or conduct business. The amendment was intended to bring the Congolese legislative framework in line with the DRC's international human rights obligations.
[ii] Joska Bahati Masumbuko, « Les difficultés rencontrées par les femmes entrepreneures et commerçantes transfrontalières en Afrique centrale: Le cas de la RDC » (Webinar on «?La perspective de genre dans les réformes de facilitation des échanges?», 10 Novembre 2021), 5.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] This data represents responses from 15 of the 23 WCO member states in West and Central Africa. WCO, « Enquête annuelle sur l’équilibre entre les hommes et les femmes au sein des autorités douanières », 2021.
[v] Bahati Masumbuko, op. cit., 7
[vi] Eliane Munkeni Kiekie, « Obstacles aux activités des femmes commerçantes en général et celles de commerce transfrontalier en RDC » (10 Novembre 2021).
