ZURICH, At an event titled “Making Trade Score for Women” held at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on 1st May, Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and FIFA President Gianni Infantino emphasised the role that football and international trade can play in empowering women. The event was opened by Ambassador Clare Kelly of New Zealand and Ambassador George Mina of Australia, who looked forward to their countries’ hosting of the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup in July. The event also included the unveiling of the 2023 Women’s World Cup official trophy.
The event was jointly organised by the WTO and FIFA, with support from the Permanent Missions of Australia and New Zealand.
In her opening remarks, Director-General Okonjo-Iweala said that the 2023 Women’s World Cup presents a significant opportunity to connect African cotton producers to the football value chain and promoting women’s economic empowerment. The WTO and FIFA will build on their ;umemorandum of understanding signed in September 2022 to work together to achieve this goal, she added.
The Director-General placed significant emphasis on the objective of increasing revenue for the Cotton-4 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) and Ca’te d’Ivoire in the highly profitable global sports apparel market. She called for greater investment in these countries to enhance their cotton and textile sectors and to help them move up the value chain.
The Director-General highlighted the complexity of the cross-border football value chain, which encompasses various WTO rules concerning goods, services and intellectual property. She also drew attention to profitable areas of the value chain, such as trade in audio-visual services and trade relating to copyrights and trademarks.
“Services trade is the fastest growing sector, growing at 8% per annum since 2005. How can we grab a bigger slice of that trade in digitally delivered services? Africa, for instance, has less than 1% of total digitally delivered services trade,” she said. “There is a lot of money involved in intellectual property. I’d like us to think how developing countries can monetize some of these intellectual property rights in the football economy,” she added.
She highlighted the WTO’s efforts to use trade as a means to empower women and strengthen the trading capacity of small businesses and developing economies, in particular through the ongoing partnership with FIFA, the International Trade Centre (ITC), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and African Export-Import Bank.
“Europe accrues the lion’s share of the value generated by the USD 220 billion plus global football economy. We can and must do more to connect women to new markets and to remunerative opportunities in high value goods and services. My hope is that developing country members are taking a bigger slice of this economy in 10 years, at least 50% of the economy compared to the current 30%,” she said.
Mr Infantino outlined the crucial linkages between trade and the sports economy, pointing to the tremendous potential for it to create more value for developing countries. FIFA’s cooperation with the WTO on the Cotton-4 initiative is part of this work to unleash that potential, he said.
Mr Infantino emphasised the importance of the upcoming Women’s World Cup, which constitutes a crucial aspect of FIFA’s global strategy to invest ambitiously in women’s football.
“We had a very successful Women’s World Cup in France in 2019, with 1.2 billion viewers all over the world, and more than 1 million in the stadiums. This shows the magnitude of this event. The next World Cup in Australia and New Zealand will be even bigger than that, with 2 billion viewers,” he said.
Mr Infantino added: “FIFA has tripled the prize money from the last World Cup in 2019 it was USD 50 million; we are now at USD 152 million. In 2015, before my arrival at FIFA, it was ten-times less USD 15 million.”
special ceremony was held to unveil the Women’s World Cup trophy, marking the Geneva leg of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Trophy Tour.
He continued: “If we manage to grow the football economy in the world to half of what Europe is doing, we’re talking about a half-a-trillion economy almost, globally. And this is absolutely feasible based on how the game is developing all over the world. But I think what is more important than that is we want to see the game developing, and women’s football, women’s empowerment, is a very significant part of that. The Cotton-4 initiative is also a simple but concrete action which will be an example to many.”
Source: Emirates News Agency