The National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) has commenced training of some 24,000 youth under the “Youth in Innovative Agriculture Programme” under the government’s new Ghana Cares ObaatanPa programme.
The ongoing training for the applicants will end on 9th June 2022 in the various private business incubation hubs in the sixteen regions of the country.
The programme enlisted young people between 18 and 40 who are already in agriculture to be trained and given funding to expand their businesses. Shortlisted applicants will receive funding and technical services support after they have gone through training and mentoring.
The CEO of NEIP, Kofi Ofosu Nkansah, at the start of the training, disclosed to stakeholders why NEIP needs their support to create more jobs and support innovations.
“We have a mandate to ensure that all our operations and programmes have a direct link to job creation. NEIP, under my leadership, will make job creation and innovations a priority. Selected incubation hubs will be engaged to train and mentor applicants of the ‘Youth in Innovative Agriculture Support’ Programne in all sixteen regions of Ghana.”
Kofi Ofosu Nkansah
The areas covered under this phase of the Youth in Innovative Agriculture Programme include the following Agric Business Sectors: Vegetable Farming, Maize Farming, Poultry/Livestock, Yam/cassava, Agro-Processing.
Modernizing Agriculture and making it attractive to the youth
This programme is part of the government’s efforts toward supporting commercial farming and attracting educated youth into agriculture to help ensure food security and to help close our food import substitution gap.
As part of modernizing Agriculture and making agriculture attractive to the youth and graduates, the NEIP is embarking on the biggest Greenhouse Estate in Africa with 75 greenhouse domes at the Dawhenya irrigation site in the Greater Accra Region.
“We plan to build more greenhouses across the sixteen (16) regions of Ghana to provide more jobs through the greenhouse project,” said the CEO of NEIP, Kofi Ofosu Nkansah.
About 45,000 Entrepreneurs trained so far
Since the inception of the initiative under the NEIP Business Support Programme, 45,000 businesses (7,000 in Window 1, 12,000 in Window 2, and 26,000 in Window 3) have received training and incubation services in the following areas: Business Management, Financial Management & Basic Bookkeeping, Sales Marketing & Branding, Business Plan Writing, Organizational Management, Corporate Governance, etc. In totality, about 9,350 Businesses have been funded and 92,000 jobs created.
The Ghana CARES (Obaatanpa) programme is an audacious GH¢100 billion post-COVID programme from the government being implemented by the Ministry of Finance to stabilize, revitalize and transform Ghana’s economy to create jobs and prosperity for Ghanaians over a three-year period.
READ ALSO: Ghana and Africa Must Industrialize- LMI Holdings
