On 27 August 2026, the International Trade Centre (ITC) launched the Gender Safe Space in Badagry, Lagos State, under the ECOWAS Agricultural Trade (EAT) Programme, funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The facility is delivered in partnership with the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency, the Nigeria Police Force Family Support Unit, and the women’s trade bodies FEBWE, OWIT and COWAN, under the theme “Transforming Evidence into Action: Creating Safer Trade Corridors for Women”. Mirror Multimedia Communications (MMC) produced the documentary on the initiative, which premiered at the launch ceremony, and provided video and photography coverage of the day, including the highlight film above.
The Safe Space exists because of who actually moves goods across West Africa. Women account for roughly seventy percent of traders in the ECOWAS region; most of them trade informally and in small volumes, and many cross on foot. Badagry sits on the approach to the Seme–Krake border, the principal crossing between Nigeria and the Republic of Benin and the gateway to the Lagos to Abidjan corridor, the busiest road route in West Africa. The women who work this corridor carry goods, cash and their own safety through it every day, and for too long a complaint of harassment, intimidation or extortion had nowhere to go. The Gender Safe Space gives them somewhere to go: a dedicated place where a woman can report an incident to trained officers, be referred for support and counselling, and have what happened to her formally recorded.
The facility is housed within the Nigeria Police Force Family Support Unit at the Badagry police station, a drive inland from the border itself. Placing it there, rather than at the crossing, means a woman can seek help away from the pressure of the border environment, inside a unit whose officers are already trained to handle gender based and family cases. It also places the Safe Space within an institution that has the authority to act on what is reported, which is what turns a report into a remedy.
The day unfolded in two parts. It opened with the formal launch ceremony at the BWC Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, where ITC, the partner agencies, the police and the women’s trade associations set out the evidence behind the initiative and the commitments each of them was making to it. The ceremony also featured the screening of the documentary MMC produced on the Gender Safe Space, giving guests the voices of the traders, officers and partners behind the initiative before the facility itself was opened. The delegation then travelled to Badagry for the opening of the Safe Space itself at the Family Support Unit, where partners and guests saw the facility that the morning’s speeches had described. That second moment is the heart of the launch: the point at which a commitment written into programme documents became a room at a police station, with trained officers behind its door. MMC covered both legs of the day, from the ceremony at the BWC Hotel to the opening in Badagry, and cut the highlight film as a record of the launch for ITC and its partners.
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