For many women entrepreneurs and Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in northern Ghana, the journey of resilience and determination reached a turning point in Tamale on Tuesday.
At the Radach Lodge and Conference Centre, 160 business owners were celebrated and awarded financial facilities totaling GH¢2 million under the initiative “MTN SME Support Program (Awards).”
The initiative, organised by Innohub in partnership with the MTN Ghana Foundation and Fidelity Bank Ghana, marked another milestone in efforts to build resilient small businesses across northern Ghana. The awardees had earlier gone through pitch competitions and business management training sessions, some of which targeted PWDs to strengthen their ability to run sustainable enterprises.
At the ceremony, Cynthia Mills, Economic Empowerment Advisor at the MTN Ghana Foundation, described the initiative as “yet another big step towards empowering entrepreneurs in building an inclusive and sustainable economy.”
She explained that the program, now in its third year, assessed 354 enterprises in Tamale and Bolgatanga before carefully shortlisting 160 for support. According to her, the beneficiaries represent sectors such as shea butter and peanut butter processing, poultry farming, fish mongering, fashion design and creative arts.
She added, “These are businesses with immense potential to not only transform the lives of their owners, but also create opportunities for others. This year we are disbursing a total of 2 million Ghana Cedis to the selected entrepreneurs.”
Breaking down the disbursement, Mills said, “Youth-led category will receive 630,000. Women-led businesses will also receive 970,000 and the differently-abled entrepreneurs will receive 400,000.”
She congratulated the awardees, praising their “resilience, determination and creativity,” and assured that MTN would continue to create opportunities for more vibrant local economies.
Robert Kuzoe, Senior Manager at MTN Ghana, emphasised that the support goes beyond money. “MTN seeks to empower these people by giving them financial support, but that is not the only thing we are giving them,” he said.
“That is why we partnered with Innohub, because they have the technical know-how to train these people with basic bookkeeping and how they can manage the resources they get from their enterprises and plough it back into their business,” he explained.
He stressed that the awards reflected MTN’s inclusive agenda. “So, we are gathered here today to award these entrepreneurs. We have the women category, and then we have the youth who are doing their own thing, and then we also have the differently abled also benefiting from this support that MTN is giving them. At the end of the day, MTN will say that we are not leaving anybody behind, and so all-inclusive. We are looking at the youth, we are targeting the women, and at the same time also targeting the differently abled in our society,” he added.
Mame Serwaa Amoakohene, Chief of Staff at Innohub, highlighted the motivation behind the partnership. She explained that Innohub was created to support small and growing businesses that are often overlooked.
“You have businesses that start out but are too small to be able to access funding. And then you have those that are already big. So people are not paying attention to this little group of people. That was where Innohub realised we have an opportunity to support them and get them to become investor-ready,” she said.
Touching on the partnership with MTN Ghana Foundation and Fidelity Bank, she said the support programme is not only about funding.
“How can we help them grow, not only with the funding part, but also with capacity building in innovative strategies, financial planning and succession planning? Sometimes you can get the money, but if you don’t know how to manage the money, you mess it up,” she noted.
For some beneficiaries, the facility represent far more than financial relief. They are the spark to dream bigger.
Niamatu Alhassan, founder and CEO of Angbanlife, shared how the support will help her agribusiness, which produces nutritious Sobolo tea made from ginger, clove and lemongrass.
“I’m very happy about it because I’m definitely going to use the money to scale up my business and also meet the target of my customers,” she said, explaining that the prize package of GH¢20,000 will help introduce new varieties such as Sobolo with ginger infusion and Sobolo with lemongrass.
For Mohammed Tahiru, CEO of Suglo Shoe Enterprise and a member of the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled, the moment was life-changing.
“For a person with disability, it’s not an inability. Many people thought disability means we are there to sit on the street and beg. But the way MTN has come out to see how we are doing, they are making us somebody in the future,” he said, adding that the grant will enable him to improve the standards of his handmade shoes and support his family.
The event was also used to celebrate the resilience of entrepreneurs from the savannah, Upper East and Northern regions, many of whom now have renewed hope of expanding their businesses and contributing to local economic development.
Source: www.KumasiMail.Com/JosephZiem
