The Executive Director of the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Kosi Yankey-Ayeh has signed a memorandum of understanding with some partners to support micro, small scale enterprises targeting young women entrepreneurs.
Mrs. Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, speaking in an interview, stressed her commitment to the new partnership, as she believes it will help the agency hit its target of creating 39,000 jobs for the youth.
The project which is part of the MasterCard Foundation (Young Africa Works), seeks to use the services of the Association of Ghana Industries, Ghana TechLab, Shehub and Intelligent Capital to mentor and provide additional skills to MSMEs to transform into large ones.
“It’s NBSSI envisages that, effective collaboration with partners will help make the work easier and also achieve the overall goal of the project. It is on this premise that we have decided today to celebrate the global entrepreneurship week, and whiles encouraging entrepreneurship around Ghana we have seized the opportunity to sign our memorandum of understanding and contract with our relevant partners to seal our partnership and continue to chart the development agenda of the nation.
“This year has been uncertain for many especially due to the 2019 pandemic. The protocols that we needed to observe which meant that timelines for many of our projects could not start at the time that we wanted to, affecting even the beneficiaries and access to the beneficiaries. But most importantly, my staff and the team and partners prevailed and were very persistent. We did not allow it to keep us back”.
Commenting on the new collaboration, the Chief Executive of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Seth Twum Akwaboah, on his part said that, the agreement will augur for businesses as they will be afforded the opportunity to liaise and be mentored by formidable and thriving businesses who have withstood the shocks in a volatile business landscape.
“Only this year, we’ve had 100 young enterprises just joining the Association to get support and our role in this program is one of the network we provide for these young enterprises. And also the fact that they will have the opportunity of being mentored by the bigger enterprises who have gone through the mill and have been successful or have good to share at different stages in their business life. So, these young enterprises will have the opportunity of working with all these and we would continue to support in this area. I also like the idea of the digitization and operation efficiency and that is one role that we will also play critically here; because you’ve got to be efficient in order to be competitive”.
Ghana TechLab, Shehub and Intelligent Capital also declared their commitment to the partnership.
