“Developing the Small and Medium Enterprises sector is the best way of eradicating poverty at grassroots level,” said Mr Sindiso Ngwenya, COMESA Secretary-General.
“If you look at the biggest economies in world like China, Korea and many more, you will realise that it’s the small and medium scale businessmen and women who are actually running these economies”, he said.
He added that SMEs are more innovative entrepreneurs than the big businesses in the world, as they can easily adapt to any economic situations.
Mr Ngwenya was speaking when French Ambassador to Zambia Marie-Annick Bourdin presented her credentials as Special Representative to COMESA. This was on 20 March 2012 at the COMESA Secretariat in Lusaka, Zambia.
The Secretary-General also commended the Government and the people of France for continuing to push for Africa's development in all spheres.
“As far as Franco-COMESA co-operation is concerned, allow me to mention that France has been one of the first non African states to accredit a special representative to COMESA and France has since helped COMESA in many ways such as the contribution to the translation unit at the Secretariat which has helped our members of staff to work without any language problems,” Ngwenya said.
He said COMESA is also engaged with the French Agency for Development (AFD) to participate in the COMESA Infrastructure Fund. There are also ongoing negotiations with the Council of La Reunion to ascertain ways of how they could fully participate and assist Member States with their strategic goal of harnessing science and technology for development.
Ms Bourdin said her country is fully aware of the benefits that come along with economic integration.
She pledged to strengthen co-operation between her country and COMESA during her stay in Zambia citing the training in French language of the staff at the Secretariat as the beginning of many things to come.
“The sustained commitment of the OIL/Francophone, the Alliance Française, and our embassy to supporting to training in French language of the members of staff here has proved efficient over the years,” she said.
“We, therefore, intend to pursue this training further and continue to support translation in order to allow full accessibility of the debates and documents to officials and citizens of both Anglophone and francophone countries,” Ms Bourdin added.
A minute of silence was also observed at the start of the ceremony in memory of four people that were shot dead at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France earlier this week.