On September 16th, at the #WTOPublicForum, the President of Organization of Women in International Trade (OWIT), Noreen Burroughes Cesareo MBE convened our roundtable on “Trusted Inclusive Digital Trade Corridors for Inclusive Services Trade.”
We went into the session with a proposition to pressure-test:
Can we better connect the platforms, institutions, services and trade ecosystems that already exist to create truly trusted, inclusive digital trade corridors that work for MSMEs — especially WSMEs — rather than creating yet another standalone solution?
And can we do so in a way that makes international trade easier to navigate for the businesses the system currently serves least well?
What was particularly encouraging was the strong consensus around the proposition — and, importantly, an appetite to take it forward.
We brought together key stakeholders from across the trade ecosystem for a genuinely interactive roundtable, and a number of themes came through strongly:
🔹 Start with the MSME and WSME and design from the business backwards: The measure of success has to be whether businesses can navigate the ecosystem, access the full spectrum of services and trusted connections they need, and participate in international trade more effectively and equitably.
🔹 Connect, don’t duplicate: Considerable infrastructure, expertise and support already exist. The opportunity is to connect the different parts of that ecosystem more effectively — while ensuring they work for MSMEs and WSMEs, not only for larger corporates.
🔹 Inclusion must be designed in from the outset: Businesses and markets start from very different positions in terms of access to finance, talent, skills, networks, infrastructure and digital maturity. An inclusive ecosystem needs to recognise and respond to those different starting points.
🔹 Interoperability matters, but trust goes beyond technology: Governance, accessibility, affordability, recognition and collaboration are all part of making such an ecosystem work. Technology is not the end in itself; it is the enabler.
And critically, WSMEs and SMEs must have a voice in designing the ecosystem, not simply be the recipients of it.
The discussion also generated real interest in what comes next, including the potential to bring together a global task force to develop the proposition further and work towards a pilot.
For now, we want to thank our panellists H.E. Patricia Benedetti Brendan Vickers, Lisa Mallin & Jose Puyana, our invited discussants Anoush der Boghossian, Livia Di Simone, Harriet Newton-Ford, Wendy Paratian and Ngozi Egbuna the entrepreneurs and participants who brought their experience, expertise & perspectives into the conversation.
There is much more to capture, and we will be bringing together and sharing the key observations and outcomes from the session shortly.
#WSMEs #InclusiveTrade #Digital #Services #DigitalTradeCorridors #WomenInTrade