The Development Bank Ghana (DBG) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ghana Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs (GCYE) to train about 1,000 young entrepreneurs across the country.
The training will be focused on financial literacy, digitization and business management skills and achieved through digital workshops, seminars and business clinics.
It is also to support the identification and training of Young Entrepreneurs within GCYE, and onboard the young entrepreneurs on the digital platform as part of the Ghana Integrated Financial Ecosystem led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and DBG.
Commenting on the agreement, Mr Michael Mensah-Baah, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, DBG, said the deal would provide support for institutional capacity building, knowledge sharing and benchmarking and sharing information and data to facilitate the understanding of each party’s mandate for effective collaboration.
“It is to collaborate and engage with the government in GCYE’s advocacy role to shape government policies, programmes and reforms that promote youth entrepreneurship in Ghana,” he added.
He said as a development bank with the responsibility to direct funding to the private sector, DBG had opted for a partnership with like-minded organisations to deliver on its agenda.
He said this in essence was the reason for their collaboration with the GCYE.
He said DBG and GCYE had developed a capacity-building programme to strengthen the soft and hard skills of young entrepreneurs for them to stay competitive and improve their business operations.
The Deputy CEO said this would be in the form of a series of workshops with the first one commencing on Thursday, October 20.
These workshops will aim at training businesses to scale up their operations as well as de-risking them to be able to access loans from DBG’s participating financial institutions.
By the end of the series of workshops, the entrepreneurs can define their success by onboarding and training young entrepreneurs on the digital platform under GIFE with greater representation of women-led and youth-led businesses
It will also equip over half of the young entrepreneurs to be bankable and eligible to access loans from DBG via the PFIs
He said in all these, DBG’s primary objective remained to ensure that young entrepreneurs were in a better position to receive and use the funds that Banks, having attained an improved appreciation of the entrepreneurship landscape, were willing to lend.
He said a critical role for DBG, therefore, was to provide long-term funding to banks and to engage in partnerships with institutions like GCYE which ensure that at the end of the day they empower the private sector for growth.
“All this is possible because DBG is committed to accelerating inclusive and sustainable economic development by fostering the growth of a competitive private sector,” he said.
Mr Sherif Ghali Abdulai, the Chief Executive Officer of GCYE, said it was never in doubt that the country’s young people were the country’s future and it was important for the nation to make conscious efforts to support youth entrepreneurship with good policies, programmes and reforms.
He commended DBG for committing itself to the agreement, saying it was a demonstration of the confidence and belief in the Ghanaian youth’s ability to contribute meaningfully to the nation’s socio-economic development.
