The Trade and Industry Ministry has mandated that enterprises, notably Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), go digital as a result of the development of technology.Dr. John Asiedu Hawkins, the Technical Advisor to the Minister of Trade, claims that the internet promotion of goods and services not only connects them to customers within the ECOWAS sub-region but also markets their products internationally.

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This would assist these small and medium-sized businesses maintain their competitiveness while they conduct business with clients from other sub-regional nations, according to him.He noted that government has put in measures to support the sector grow as most of the country's export earnings come from this sector.Dr Hawkins added that the SMEs sector provides 85% of manufacturing jobs in the country.

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Speaking at the West Africa Connect programme in Accra on Tuesday, September 20, 2022, he said, "We also encourage them to go online with their products and we are having capacity-building training programmes for them so that we can network not only for the domestic market and for AfCFTA.

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""For AfCFTA as a whole, the government has put in place a measure to identify 100 MSMEs that are being supported both capacity building, and financially for them to be able to move across the borders of Ghana to trade with their partners in West Africa as a whole," the Technical Advisor to the Minister of Trade, Dr John Asiedu Hawkins stated.

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AfCFTA was introduced in 2018 and aims at creating a single market for Africa, as well as, ensuring the free movement of goods and services on the continent.This free movement of goods and services will help expand Intra-African trade.This implies that goods will be sold at a relatively cheaper price because of the increase in production which will in turn create both direct and indirect jobs for the teeming unemployed youth.

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The free trade area also provides traders and/or importers an opportunity to stay competitive.Businesses when conducted in a free and safe environment will help reduce poverty in member states as well as create sustainable development.

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