Invest in Africa (IIA) Ghana, an organisation with focus on fostering partnerships to solve shared private sector challenges, has signed a $1 million grant agreement with the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) to build the capacity of over 100 small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
The SMEs are those that have registered with the African Partner Pool (APP), the country’s first cross-sector online business directory for SMEs developed by IIA as a response to linking small businesses with large ones for business.
The AfDB will be funding the Ghana SME Business Linkage Programme from its Fund for Africa Private Sector Assistance (FAPA), a thematic trust fund sponsored by Japan and Austria in support of AfDB.
At the signing ceremony
The Ghana Country Manager of AfDB, Mrs Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, explained in Accra yesterday that the Ghana SME Business Linkage Programme was designed to nurture mutually beneficial business relationships between large companies operating in the country and the over 150 local SMEs.
“This is a unique partnership, coaching, mentoring and training on all issues that really matter to large corporates. The objective is to ensure quality, timeliness and the scale that the large corporations require when SMEs want to move to the value chain and become suppliers to the big companies,” the AfDB country manager said.
The grant would target between 100 and 150 SMEs which had already displayed commitment on their own, she told the Daily Graphic adding that “we are also trying to identify other partners to work with.
The Africa Partner Pool
Local businesses registered on the APP will have a profile page to promote their business, while international and domestic companies are able to use a search tool to help them find suppliers with the qualifications, experience and standards they need.
A tender’s notice board will also feature buyers’ tenders from across sectors, giving local businesses greater visibility of opportunities.
The APP was developed in response to research findings that international companies seeking local partners faced difficulty identifying validated local SMEs from which to procure goods and services.
The Managing Director of IIA, Mr Sam Brandful, said the Africa Partner Pool was designed to help solve challenges SMEs faced in doing business with large companies, such as market access, and finance.
“By this agreement, the AfDB and IIA will provide the business community a workable and practicable channel to pool resources and address the challenges facing SMEs,” Mr Brandful said, in the hope that by the end of the three-year period, the programme would have a catalogue of good outcomes to justify a second tranche.
He said the training would come in a number of ways, including training institutions, individuals, industry players providing mentorship, stressing, “we will have a range of training activities and a dedicated team because we cannot have a one-size fits all approach.”
The Ambassador of Japan, Mr Kaoru Yoshimura, lauded the programme, as he underscored the importance of SMEs in African economies.
He said although the backbone of the Japanese economy was the over four million SMEs, accounting for about 99.7 per cent of all businesses, they still faced identical challenges such as access to markets and finance.
The signing witnessed support from various ministries including the Ministries of Finance, and Trade and Industry.