Rejoice Nikabo used to sit on the street and beg. There was no other way, she says, for a person with her disability to get by in a country where jobs for young people are scarce, and the ones that exist rarely pay enough to live on.
Then came an unlikely lifeline: a small grant and a course in sewing. Today she stitches dresses and bags for a living. “I can now support myself and live with dignity,” she said.
Her turnaround is one of hundreds the MTN Ghana Foundation points to as evidence that a targeted mix of cash, training and mentorship can chip away at one of Ghana’s most stubborn economic problems — a youth unemployment rate that dwarfs the national average and shows little sign of closing.
The foundation’s answer is not job creation in the traditional sense, but something closer to seeding entrepreneurs. Under its Enterprise Support Programme, run jointly with the business accelerator Innohub, the group is trying to build 500 small and medium-sized businesses over five years, with grants and training aimed squarely at young people, women and people with disabilities — groups that banks in Ghana routinely turn away for lack of collateral or a guarantor.
“The goal is to move beyond short-term assistance and support long-term income generation,” said Professor Franklin Manu, the foundation’s board chairman, describing the philosophy behind the group’s economic empowerment work at a recent installment of its Bright Conversations speaker series. That work, he said, leans heavily on entrepreneurship, technology training and support for small enterprises.
Lucky break
For some recipients, the programme has simply been a lucky break they nearly missed. Vozbeth Azumah, a farmer and fish processor, first heard about it scrolling through Facebook and applied on a whim.
The GH¢20,000 he eventually received let him expand his operation, and he now talks about hiring more workers as a kind of personal mission. “I plan to give back to society by employing more people,” he said.
Mary Dzigbordi Budu had a similar path: she, too, found the opportunity online, made it through the selection process, and used her own GH¢20,000 award to grow her agribusiness. She says she now hopes to create jobs in her own community.
The numbers behind these individual stories are modest but growing. In 2023, the foundation put roughly GH¢1 million into 140 small and medium businesses, with grants of up to GH¢10,000 apiece paired with training.
A separate push in the Central Region delivered grants as large as GH¢20,000 to 50 businesses, bundled with lessons in customer service, financial management, branding and digital marketing. Across all its work — economic empowerment, education and health combined — the foundation says it has poured more than GH¢106.5 million into programs reaching millions of people nationwide.
Yet the scale of the problem the foundation is chipping away at is daunting. Ghana’s overall unemployment rate eased to 13.6 per cent in 2024, down from 14.6 per cent the year before, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.
But that national figure masks a much bleaker picture for the young: joblessness runs near 32 per cent among Ghanaians aged 15 to 24, and about 22.5 per cent for those between 15 and 35. Many who do have work remain stuck in informal, precarious jobs that offer little in the way of stability or upward mobility.
Efforts like the one backed by MTN are meant to address that gap by helping small businesses survive past their first fragile years. But analysts studying these programs point to persistent weak spots: outreach rarely reaches Ghana’s more remote regions, training does not always match what employers actually need, and funding disbursements can lag when businesses need them most.
Sustained mentorship
What happens after the initial grant, many argue, matters just as much as the grant itself. Sustained mentorship, help connecting to markets, and stronger ties to banks and other financial institutions are seen as prerequisites for businesses to grow beyond mere subsistence. Closer coordination with government apprenticeship and vocational training schemes, observers say, could help such efforts go further still.
For now, the foundation’s model rests on stories like Ms Nikabo’s — proof, its backers argue, that even a modest infusion of capital and training can change the trajectory of a life, one small business at a time.
By JBA team
