Women vendors signed business deals worth $5.5 million (about Rwf3.7 billion) during the just concluded World Export Development Forum (WEDF) in Kigali.

This was revealed by Arancha González, the Executive Secretary of the International Trade Centre (ITC) at the WEDF closing ceremony on Thursday.

As part of the forum, hundreds of business-to-business meetings were organised between women entrepreneurs from across the world who had attended the forum aimed at forging business partnerships.

"The 500 business-to-business meetings led to the signing of 44 letters of intent worth $5.5 million at the Women Vendors Exhibition and Forum,” González said.

She said the agreements included a Brazilian buyer that will sell tour packages that bring tourists to Africa for coffee sampling, eco-tourism and fashion among others.

However, by press time, the organisers had not yet established the number of Rwandan business women that had signed the letters of intent.

Gloria Kamanzi Uwizera, the founder of Glo Creations, a textile designing company, said she signed a letter of intent worth Rwf10m for textile machines with a Brazilian company.

"I was interested in the machines given the nature of our business. We established connection with the company and they will send us more samples from which to choose,” Kamanzi said.

She said the forum offered an opportunity for her to share with other entrepreneurs which she says will help her improve her business.

"The meeting was productive because we had very good feedback about our products. I am happy to say that the Afro Brazilian Chamber of Commerce requested me to send them a presentation of our products so as to show it to their partners with view to start doing business with them,” Kamanzi explains.

During a session dubbed; "Why buy from women owned enterprise?”, Oda Gasizigwa, the Minister for Gender and Family Promotion, pledged the government’s committment to continue supporting women entrepreneurs.

"I think the legal framework is vital and we need to continue filling the gaps that exist in our legal frameworks, especially those that are not gender sensitive. In Rwanda, empowering women through the land tenure reforms has facilitated women to access loans using the land as collateral,” Gasizigwa discloses.