The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has called upon governments and private stakeholders across the globe to implement policies and initiatives that would aid women in Fintech businesses.
Addressing the gathering during the Women in Tech Forum at the ongoing 3i Africa Summit in Africa on the topic, “ Closing the gap: Strategies for increased investment in women-focused Tech businesses, she highlighted that, investing in women is not only about gender equality, but it is a strategic development in economic development, thus demands a lot of attention from financial institutions.
“Government and private sector stakeholders must work together to implement policies and regulations that foster an enabling environment for women-focused tech businesses. These include protecting intellectual properties, ensuring equity in procurement processes and providing tax incentives for gender-diverse conferences”, she urged.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful underscored the support the Ghanaian government is giving to women in Tech to provide digital and entrepreneurial skills training at no rate.
“We must be deliberate in targeting gender-led businesses for support so I commend the Ghana Enterprise Agency, we are supporting the Ghana Tech Lab and Kumasi Hive who operate from the Accra Digital Center in providing training for start-ups and giving them some startup funding as well. And we insist that 40% of the trainees are women, at least in some of the training programmes like the Ghana Embursment Fund for electronic communications that are across the country, we have a digital transformation centre initiative that we utilize the community ICT centres across the country to provide digital skill training and entrepreneurial skills training”, she added.
The Minister further noted the need for partnership programmes with stakeholders to strengthen and prepare women to assume leadership roles in the field of fintech.
“We need public and private partnerships to target training and mentorship programs for women in Fintech. These programs should cover Fintech skills and entrepreneurial and leadership programmes to prepare women to skill their businesses and assume leadership roles”, she stated.