Capacity building key to managing social enterprises- Stakeholders
Stakeholders in the business environment have called for continuous capacity building programmes for social enterprises to enable them to understand the business terrain and run their enterprises effectively.
In their view, in spite of the growing number of social enterprises established within the past few years, most of its owners have little or no knowledge about the opportunities available, requirements and steps to register their businesses.
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The situation, they said, was one of the major impediments affecting the development of social enterprises in the country.
The stakeholders made the call at a meeting organised by Star-Ghana Foundation on the State of Social Enterprise in the country.
Meeting
The meeting explored the challenges and way forward in financing and creating an enabling environment for social businesses.
It brought together various stakeholders including players from the industry, government agencies, academia and media to share insights into the current ecosystem and how best to enhance it for social enterprises to thrive.
The Dean of International Programmes at the Accra Technical University (ATU), Prof. Ernest Winful, said most of the owners did not see social enterprise as a career, hence the need for the education on how to effectively manage such ventures to begin from the Senior High School level.
“The people who graduate are unable to feed the industry and most Ghanaians are not thinking about social enterprises, all they think about is to finish school and look for a job,” he said.
To help address this issue, Prof. Winful explained that the ATU had implemented teaching mechanisms for students, including the designing of products viable for consumption in the Ghanaian market.
That, he said, was to ensure that the students were well prepared for the job market and ready to become better entrepreneurs.
Challenges
A business consultant and legal practitioner, Ms Teiko Sabah, said no access to the right funding, high cost of credit, inadequate regulation of the sub-sector, unstable exchange rate between the cedi and major currencies and inadequate infrastructure (hard and soft), to support their operations were some of the current challenges affecting social enterprises.
She, therefore, called on the Ministry of Trade and Industry to outline a road map for the implementation of the various policies that had been promulgated and the proposed Acts being prepared within the sector.
“We must also support ongoing advocacy work on aligning various policies and laws to better support the social enterprise sector,” she said.
The sector, Ms Sabah said, must also develop social enterprises aimed at improving access to funding and strengthening women's leadership and managerial skills.
These include enhancing self-confidence, conducting additional research and collecting more data on women's participation in the social economy and social enterprises, as well as increasing access to information and the availability of mentoring programmes and support structures.
Redefine
The Chief Executive Officer of Mirepa Capital Limited, Mr Samuel Yeboah, underscored the need to revisit the definition of social enterprises and provide a policy framework for the enterprise.
“We need to go down the grass roots to educate the public on what social enterprise really is,” he said.
