The Development Bank Ghana, in partnership with the Ghana Chamber of Youth Entrepreneurs (GCYE), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to provide adequate skills training and funding support to 1,000 young entrepreneurs across all 16 regions of the country.
The collaboration seeks to promote the businesses of young Ghanaian entrepreneurs through training on financial literacy, digitisation and business management skills, with a 60 percent greater representation of women-led businesses.
Subsequent to all these, DBG and GCYE have developed a capacity-building programme to strengthen the soft and hard skills of Young Entrepreneurs in order for them to stay competitive and improve their business operations. This will be in the form of a series of training aimed at businesses to scale up their operations, as well as de-risking them to be able to access loans from DBG’s participating financial institutions.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of GCYE, Sherif Ghali, this collaborative mandate will be done with the relevant government and state institutions through advocacy to promote projects aimed at sharpening and enhancing young entrepreneurs’ capacity across the country to contribute in the development of Ghana.
He said: “We see this partnership as timely and strategic, considering the debilitating economic environment and its consequential impact on businesses owned by young people. It is never in doubt that this country’s young people have become the country’s future and no more the future leaders, as we all used to say. As such, it is incumbent on the nation to make conscious efforts to support youth entrepreneurship and policies, programmes and reforms that promote youth entrepreneurship”.
He commended the Development Bank of Ghana for committing itself to this Memorandum of Understanding, saying: “It is an excellent demonstration of the confidence and belief in young Ghanaians’ ability to contribute meaningfully i the nation’s socio-economic development”.
He urged other organisations and institutions to emulate the strategic example set by the Development Bank of Ghana, by partnering with the Ghana Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs to develop programmes and strive to build an industrialised nation.
Mr. Ghali assured DBG that they will judiciously and prudently apply the support given to the Chamber by ensuring they strictly abide by terms of the MoU.
Emphasising the reason behind DBG’s support and collaboration for the move, Deputy CEO of DBG Michael Mensah-Baah noted that one of the key pillars for DBG’s operations and business sustainability is partnership. Therefore, being a development bank with the responsibility to direct funding to the private sector, he said DBG has opted for partnership; and it is evidenced in their adoption of a wholesale banking model.
He said: “This is because we believe that it will allow us to leverage the network and capabilities of commercial banks and other agencies to channel the funds to the private sector, ultimately making us more successful agenda-wise”.
He revealed that a critical role for DBG, therefore, is to provide long-term funding to banks and engage in partnerships with institutions like GCYE which ensure that, at the end of the day, the private sector is empowered for growth.
“This is also very relevant in the wake of government’s call for more entrepreneurship opportunities for the youth, starting with the recently introduced YouStart Initiative. We therefore believe that our partnership with GCYE will inject additional momentum into the effort to grow Ghana’s new generation of private sector players,” said Mr. Mensah-Baah.
For interested participants of the training programme, Sherif Ghali said there will be a new portal created on the website of GCYE for beneficiaries to fill out the form with the required information and submit. He encouraged all young entrepreneurs to continually visit the website and all social media platforms for an announcement of the portal’s opening.
