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).
The programmes, which form part of a collaborative agreement between the two institutions, seek to support female entrepreneurs running micro, small and medium-sized businesses.
Phase 1 of the training series, which took place across the southern zone of the country comprising the Greater Accra, Western, Eastern, Central, Volta and the Oti regions, recorded a total of 1,204 entrepreneurs (1,197 Females and 7 Males) in attendance. Participants were taken through
various themes, including business planning process, financial management, and marketing, which includes advertising, promotion and the use of social media as a tool to grow businesses.
Manager, Business Development Services (Gender & Youth) of DBG, Sefakor Carlotta Boadu, reiterated at the various sessions of some of the training programmes the need for women to be empowered and the need to realise that they are capable and able to lead 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 collaborating with DBG to promote women entrepreneurs as a pipeline for financial support through DBG’s PFIs.
She said the effort was clearly aligned to 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 can effectively compete and contribute towards Ghana’s economic development.
The training, organised by the two institutions, is expected to impact over 3,000 women across all the 16 regions of Ghana.
It is also expected that 1,000 out of that number would be put onto the Ghana Integrated Financial Ecosystem (GIFE) and also to gain certification on the 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.
