NBSSI grooms 50,000 MSMEs

The National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) has provided capacity building and business enhancement support for about 50,000 micro small and medium enterprises in the country since the start of the year, its CEO, Ms. Kosi Yankey, has disclosed.

The beneficiary enterprises, drawn from agro processing, garment and manufacturing, industries, technology and tourism, among others, received training in the areas of business planning and management as well as value chain analysis.

According to the NBSSI boss, the programmes and interventions were in line with board’s core mandate to empower MSMEs through technical assistance to make them more productive and competitive to contribute significantly to national development.

“These interventions are critically needed by start-ups and SMEs; proper business planning and a proper understanding of the governance structure of any business is key to accessing funding. So, at NBSSI, these are some of the interventions that we are spearheading.”

Ms. Yankey was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of an engagement with women entrepreneurs and private/public sector industry leaders from key sectors of the economy in Accra on the occasion of this year’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Day celebrations.

Earlier this month, the NBSSI launched an incubator programme in partnership with the Strategies to Promote Innovative Networks (SPINnet) — Garment and Textiles Cluster to groom and accelerate entrepreneurs and small-scale businesses in the garment and textile sector.

The programme will train existing and potential start-ups in the sector on compliance standards, provide mentorship and financial support, as well as market access in line with government’s quest to create more jobs for the youth.

For the NBSSI boss, such initiatives are ways of promoting entrepreneurship in the country to help address the high unemployment rate.

“We currently have incubator and accelerator programmes where we groom business ideas into viable ventures and also provide the platform for existing businesses to leverage various linkages for growth and expansion,” she added.

Going forward, the NBSSI plans to enhance its visibility to start-ups and connect MSMEs to various sources of support that abound within the public and private spaces.

Women’s Entrepreneurship Day celebration

The one-day engagement brought together women business owners and leaders to brainstorm solutions to the myriad of challenges that are affecting their productivity, particularly in the areas of gender parity in the entrepreneurial space as well as enhancing the productivity of enterprises owned by women.

Participants, drawn from the sectors of industry, agro-processing, finance, technology, garment and manufacturing, as well as tourism, discussed specific barriers to women’s access to operational resources and how to ensure equity in accessing such resources.

The Women Entrepreneurship Development department of the NBSSI has the primary mandate of driving support for MSMEs towards women entrepreneurs across the various fields of business.

The idea is to facilitate the creation of stronger women entrepreneurs that will create more job opportunities to push socio-economic growth.

The department has facilitated the participation of more women entrepreneurs in the various training and capacity building programmes that have been organised by the NBSSI this year.