Five women in entrepreneurship have been selected to benefit from an amount of $10,000 each for their participation in the Standard Chartered and the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre’s cohort incubator programme.
The initiative is a business incubator specifically designed to provide support for women-led or women–owned businesses that leverage on technology as part of an agenda to creating opportunities for female entrepreneurs.
The cohort-2 started with twenty (20) women participating in the nine -months long incubation programme that comprised business advisory and financial interventions.
The participating entrepreneurs presented their business pitches to a selection committee out of which the five outstanding businesses emerged as winners of the programme to scale up their businesses.
Executive Director of the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre, Rukayatu Sanusi said there is the need to have more of such programmes as venture capitals to finance women entrepreneurs in technology.
The programme, she noted, seeks to build capacity and skills of women.
“They will have the mindset to grow their businesses and hopefully in the long haul they can one day give accesses to investments.
“Any survey we look at shows Africa accounts for the biggest number of women entrepreneurs although the vast majority of that are women in the informal sector so there is a case to be made for women”.
“So we juxtapose that to what is happening globally and you will see that women are indeed marginalized. So this how you have to sell your business: it must come across as having planned for the next 10 years for your business and it must come across as having market for our business” She stressed.
For her part, the Guest of Honour and Founder of Soronko Academy, Regina Honu shared her experience having successfully participated in the cohort incubation programme.
“You must have strategy. That is what helps you to navigate and stay ahead of competition and to understand your next move. How do I create a brand that is credible and global? What is my next step so without strategy sometimes you cannot connect to the things you want to? Be well read, well researched so you understand what is moving, changing and what is going to happen next”.
Hannah Aidoo, the Founder and CEO of H.A. Farms, a finalist in the cohort incubation programme said she will use her grant money to set up a fully automated drinking system for their birds.
“80% of our workers are women so filling our drinkers manually is a lot of work so we are going to use our money to set up a fully automated drinkers system and also set up a website for our business to get more customers and expose our business to other investors. We will also use our grant money to purchase technologically improved poultry products like day old chicks and feeding”.
The women in technology programme currently runs in Kenya, Nigeria UAE and Pakistan.
Source: 3news.com/Ghana