Ghana New Ventures Competition (GNVC) Hosts Entrepreneurship Workshop

...for African Youth in Partnership with the 2004 Pan-African Student Summit
Accra, Ghana ? Wednesday, 16 June, 2004 ? Ghana New Ventures Competition (GNVC) has organised and facilitated an Entrepreneurship Workshop for more than 40 young people from across sub-Saharan Africa and North America as part of the 2004 Pan-African Student Summit on Wednesday, 16 June, from 8 AM to 11 AM, at BusyInternet in Accra.

Through this workshop, GNVC highlighted and promoted entrepreneurship in developing countries as a means for self-empowerment, poverty reduction, and overall economic growth. GNVC then challenged the participating teams of tertiary students to each devise a business idea and strategy to tackle one of three socially important problems that impact many African cities: sanitation, the digital divide, and road accidents.

Teams? solutions to the problems sets were as diverse and varied as the group of participants. Countries represented by this year?s Pan-African Student Summit constituency were Ghana, Cote d?Ivoire, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Guinea, and the US.

GNVC is an international not-for-profit organisation incorporated in Ghana and the US. The organisation was founded by a group of Ghanaian students in the USA who were involved with the leadership of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?s (MIT) $50,000 Entrepreneurship Competition in Boston, MA. Since its inception, GNVC has aimed to lay the networking and educational infrastructure necessary for entrepreneurs to pursue their goals, learning the skills to start businesses that will benefit Ghana?s people and economy.

GNVC meets these objectives by organising annual business plan competitions centered on training aspiring entrepreneurs to produce effective business plans, empowering them through mentors and role models in the Ghanaian business community, and enabling them to establish their own companies. GNVC also provides the most promising teams of entrepreneurs with start-up grants totaling thousands of dollars.

This year, GNVC awarded $10,000 in total start-up grant commitments to three winning companies: Supply Solutions, Greenfield Agro Ventures, and Rejuve Spa & Resort. In the previous two years of operations, GNVC catalysed the formation of three other new ventures in Ghana ? Strategic Accounting Solutions (SAS), Afroduct, and Peco Training Centre ? each of which received $1,000 in start-up grants. Therefore, the total number of new ventures funded by GNVC via three business plan competitions has become six.

For information: http://www.gnvc.org

Contact:

Ben Cohen, Chief Operations Officer

Or contact: cohen@gnvc.org

Phone: 0244-975-352 or 021-258-795