Women entrepreneurs across South Africa reported concrete sales and new business connections at the inaugural EmpowerHer Market Trade Fair, held on 1 August at the Durban Olive Convention Centre. For many participants, the event delivered something that ordinary networking rarely does: actual money changing hands on the day.
Gogo Nomangungu, founder of Sangoma Diaries, felt that difference directly. Her stand, stocked with complementary herbal medicines and organic skincare products, drew steady customer interest and translated it into significant sales before the fair closed. “By opening this women’s trade fair, we made serious sales today. Our businesses are growing because customers are buying directly from us. I’m very grateful to the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities for creating this opportunity,” she said. Nomangungu also highlighted the fair’s role in promoting indigenous knowledge systems and locally manufactured products, two areas that rarely receive dedicated commercial platforms.
Her experience was not incidental. It was the point.
The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities partnered with Absa to launch the initiative, formally opened by Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga as part of the 2026 Women’s Month programme. The fair ran under the theme “Empowered Women Empower the Nation,” anchoring it within this year’s broader focus on expanding economic participation for women-owned enterprises.
Chikunga was direct about the structural problems the event was designed to address. Limited access to markets, procurement opportunities, finance, investment, business development support, technology, information, networks and supply chains remain persistent obstacles for women entrepreneurs across the country. The trade fair was built specifically to cut through those barriers by connecting women-owned businesses with buyers, investors, government departments, corporates, financial institutions and enterprise development partners, all in one place.
The minister drew a clear line between what this event was and what a conventional exhibition looks like. “This trade fair is not merely an exhibition; it is an economic empowerment and market access intervention. It seeks to unlock business opportunities, investment, enterprise growth, job creation and sustainable economic empowerment,” Chikunga said. The goal, she stressed, was “actual commercial transactions, investment, procurement opportunities, business partnerships and long-term market linkages,” not product showcasing for its own sake.
The programme reflected that ambition. Alongside exhibiting their goods and services, entrepreneurs took part in business pitch sessions, procurement engagements, finance and development finance discussions, and business support clinics. Each element was designed to move participants closer to sustained commercial relationships rather than one-day visibility.
By contrast with events that measure success in footfall and brochures collected, the EmpowerHer Market Trade Fair set a different benchmark: transactions completed, investors engaged, partnerships begun. Government framed the initiative as part of a longer strategy to improve women’s economic participation by creating sustained pathways to new markets and investment, not just annual moments of recognition.
South Africa observes Women’s Month every August in commemoration of the more than 20,000 women who marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956 to protest the extension of pass laws to women. National Women’s Day falls on 9 August each year. Whether the commercial relationships formed at this inaugural fair survive beyond the convention centre floor is the question that will determine whether the model earns a second edition.