If you educate a woman, you educate a nation, the adage goes.

The Technical Advisor for South Sudan Women Entrepreneurship Association Finella Lams amplified this quote by emphasising on the importance of empowering women through entrepreneurship to impart skills on them through capacity building.

“There is need to support women [by not just] just providing [for them] but also developing the will to focus on capacity building especially on value addition,” Lams said.

She was speaking to the media during a dinner meeting organised by South Sudan National Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture on Monday, May 24 at Pyramid Hotel in Juba.

Present in the meeting was the East Africa Community Secretary General Dr. Peter Mathuki, members of the EAC delegations, South Sudan government officials from the Ministry of Trade among others.

Ms. Lams said South Sudan produces varieties of essential edible goods such as groundnuts, simsim and Lulu which can be converted into finished goods if the producers are empowered.

“South Sudan produces high quality groundnuts which are organic that are not genetically modified. Women can process these groundnuts to produce groundnuts paste and oil out of it. But without the skills the women cannot be able to utilise this kind of value change into its full potential,” she said.

She emphasised the need for women to obtain both technical and basic skills without enrolling for the classes in order to execute production process.

“I think for EAC to empower women in South Sudan, they need to be organized. I believe that a wealthy woman is a wealthy nation. Though majority of women did not go to school, some of these activities like processing of raw materials do not require to someone to have classroom knowledge,’’ she argued.

“When you assess most of the markets in Juba, very few South Sudanese women are engaged in this trade (entrepreneurship) because they do not have enough entrepreneurship skills. So in term of capacity they [are] outshone by their EAC counterparts,” she added.

She also said that storage facilities, grinding machines should be availed to make their work simpler.

Potential is there

To catch up with the competition from other women in the EAC bloc, she called on the government to collaborate with the EAC Secretariat to strengthen the capacity of women in South Sudan.

“In order for the women of South Sudan to realise the benefits of the integration of EAC, their capacity needs to be built,” she said.

She lamented that women are lacking funding to expand their businesses, hence, this clips down their hopes of growing businesses beyond the borders.

Thriving in Gum Arabic

However, to Lams, it is not all doom and gloom. She lauded how many women are involved in collecting “Gum Arabic.”

Last year a South Sudanese company exported about 22 tons of “Gum Arabic collected in the country to International market in Europe.

Gum Arabic is a natural gum made up of hardened sap of the acacia tree. It is used as an emulsifier in the manufacture of soft drinks, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

Meanwhile, the Undersecretary of South Sudan Ministry of East Africa Affairs Andrea Ariik appealed to EAC Secretary General Dr. Peter Mathuki to look into the plight of South Sudanese nationals who are not allowed to work in other EAC countries.

“I would like to tell Secretary-General Peter Mathuki that, it is only in our country where the policy of the common market is implemented hundred per cent. As I talk to you now, if you go to some parts of this country, you will find citizens from Kenya or Uganda and others are running businesses without any interruption; and this cannot happen in those countries,” Ariik said.

He added that South Sudan government has reduced some trade barriers to give freedom to business dealers regardless of where they come from.

The official pointed out that South Sudanese have often complained that they do not benefit from the EAC yet the government pays the commission’s annual tariff.