2 Bodies train women entrepreneurs in southern zone
Development Bank Ghana (DBG) and Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) have successfully concluded a series of capacity-building training programmes aimed at women-led Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (WMSMEs).
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The programmes, which form part of a collaborative agreement between DBG and the GEA, seek to support female entrepreneurs running micro, small and medium-sized businesses.
Phase one of the training series, which took place across the southern zone of the country, made up of the Greater Accra, Western, Eastern, Central, Volta and Oti regions, attracted a total of 1,204 entrepreneurs.
Participants were taken through various themes, including Business Planning Process, Financial Management and Marketing, which included advertising, promotion and the use of social media as a tool to grow businesses.
Since it began operations in 2022, DBG has been intentional about making businesses bankable to make them attract the right funding to upscale their operations.
The Manager, Business Development Services (Gender & Youth) of DBG, Sefakor Carlotta Boadu, stressed the need for women to be empowered to realise that they are capable of leading businesses that can grow to become generational enterprises.
The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of GEA, Mrs Anna Armo-Himbson, who monitored some of the training workshops in the Greater Accra and Western regions, expressed excitement at the collaboration with DBG to promote women entrepreneurs.
She said the effort was clearly aligned with GEA's focus to support women-owned/led businesses to enable them to rub shoulders with their male counterparts.
She encouraged them to participate fully in the training and apply the skills to enhance their business operations so that they effectively compete and contribute towards Ghana’s economic development.
In Ghana, women-owned businesses contribute significantly to the growth and development of the economy and account for 44 per cent of all micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.
The contribution of women-owned businesses in Ghana is further emphasised in the MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs, which in 2020 ranked Ghana (36.5 per cent) among the world’s three leading economies with the most women-owned businesses, with Uganda (39.6 per cent) and Botswana (38.5 per cent).
The training organised by the two institutions is expected to impact over 3,000 women across all 16 regions of Ghana.
It is also expected that 1,000, out of that number, would be onboarded onto the Ghana Integrated Financial Ecosystem (GIFE) and also go on to gain certification on Pillar 1 of GIFE, that is the SME Financial Empowerment (SFE) component.
The project is also anticipated to create 1,200 sustainable jobs and a further 1,000 businesses linked to wider markets across the globe.