Ghana: NBSSI Trains More Than 50,000 MSMEs in Just A Year

Ms Kosi Yankey, Executive Director of NBSSI

Accra, November 17, 2017//-Ghana’s National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), a non-profit public sector organisation under the Ministry of Trade & Industry has trained over 50,000 Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in business management in the country, this year alone.

The move, according to the Executive Director of the NBSSI, Ms. Kosi Yankey would enable the MSME managers to properly manage their businesses to enable them create employment opportunities for the teeming unemployed youth in the country.

Ms Yankey who disclosed this to journalists at a day’s forum to mark this year’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Day (WED) in Accra, explained that out of the over 50,000, 4,500 MSMEs were trained with the support of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in business management, budget planning, value chain analysis.

WED

 The WED which forms part of the Global Entrepreneurs Week (GEW) celebrates innovators and job creators that drive economic growth to transform communities worldwide.

 The forum organised by the NBSSI Ghana served as a unique platform for a group of 15 women who are change-makers and creators to engage in powerful and empowering discussions around the challenges women face while doing business in Ghana.

The discussions also examined issues faced by the agro-processing, finance, technology, apparel manufacturing, the extractive industry and tourism sectors with the aim of catalyzing ideas into action. These daring conversations represent the first of a series of events being planned by NBSSI, to drive the socio-economic development of women entrepreneurs in Ghana, according to her.

Incubators and Accelerators

She explained that in a bid to further  support SMEs operators in the country, the NBSSI in partnership with the Strategies to Promote Innovative Networks (SPINnet) recently launched an incubator for the garment and textile sector at the Accra Technical Training Centre (ATTC) to groom, mentor and accelerate entrepreneurs and small-scale businesses in that sector.

The incubator being the first of its kind to be set up in the country, according to Ms Yankey would be replicated in all the 10 regional capitals.

She said: “The incubator is supposed to have a broad focus looking at the various sectors. We are going to launch it across the country but the first one has been launched in Accra some few weeks ago”.

“The centre at ATTC is the training centre. Because  we wanted to look at the creative art sector which includes the garments and textiles. We see a lot of that in the sector, especially art and craft”.

“In fact, there a lot of youth in the sector and see how the centre could train better finishing of designers and the work they do and also promote the garments and textiles sector.

So, it has been launched and we are going through the process of fine-tuning it and getting the entrepreneurs who will be placed in these centres to support them. That is the incubator for the start-ups”, Ms Yankey emphasised.

On the accelerator programme, she said the NBSSI also had the accelerator programme which began last month.

Ms Yankey added: ” If you are aware last month, we also started our 100 businesses in the Kaizen business acceleration programme which is sponsored by JICA, the Japanese government where we bring in 100 businesses that already in existence, see what are the problems they have in the businesses , baseline them and then work with them to the point  where they are increasing productivity, their factory floors have changed, where they have the right tools at the right places, so the businesses will grow and accelerate”.

So, we are looking at two things . The start-ups segment, we are looking at those that have started and need to be accelerated and move forward. So at NBSSI that is the main focus of the work that we are doing”, she further explained.

Challenges

Touching on the challenges of SMEs, Ms Yankey indicated that one of the major challenges to SMEs operating in the country, is access to information.

She maintained: ” There are so many resources that are in the public and private sectors and also from the NGOs and civil society organisations but people are not taking  advantage of them.

Another major challenge confronting the SME players, Ms Yankey reiterated is finance which has always been a headache for them.

To address this, the Executive Director of the NBSSI said the agency is working with some financial institutions to ensure that businesses that they are working with have access to finance.

Additionally, technology has never been a good friend to the SME operators in the West African second largest economy. For instance, having the right processing plants or the right equipment is so expensive.

 Nicolas Gebara, Fund Manager of Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund, a programme set up to strengthen the advocacy capacity of private sector business groups and associations in Ghana, urged the SME operators to embrace social media and the internet to enable them promote their products and services at a low cost.

Meanwhile, the Director of Women Entrepreneurship Development Department of NBSSI, Madam Habiba Sumani used the opportunity to throw more lights on the agency’s upcoming event.

She said: “NBSSI is excited to host the first Ghana Women Entrepreneurship Summit (GWES), which will take place in the first half of 2018”.

Madam Habiba added that the event would bring together key innovators and stakeholders from the public/private sectors and the international community, to find effective ways to resolve challenges and systemic constraints that prevent women’s full and equal participation, in Ghana’s economy.

By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report

Email: mk68008@gmail.com

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