Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Enterprise Agency Kosi Yankey-Ayeh has warned that growth in Ghana’s Micro, Small, and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) sector will remain stagnated if females who dominate the sector fail to embrace digitization.
She made the call at the opening of this year’s Ghana digital and innovation week hosted by She Hub with support from Hapa Space Ghana and funding from GIZ in the Ashanti Region.
Kosi Yankey -Ayeh found it unacceptable that several women led businesses are not leveraging the power of digital innovations to drive market growth in the era of a rapid digital revolution.
“Digitization has taken a huge foothold in the work we do but if you are not transforming to embrace it, then you miss out. We need to get more women in business to enhance their vision,” she strongly recommended.
She insisted that it was not enough for businesses to perpetually remain as SMEs disconnected from the enabling power of digital tools.
If you look at the statistics, most of the women led businesses are micro in nature but they have to grow. It’s because they are the ones who can expand to create employment and take advantage of resources.
Kosi pointed out that 60 percent of all business support facilities of the Ghana Enterprise Agency under her watch had gone to supporting women, underscoring the commitment of the Nana Akufo Addo administration to breaking gender barriers that excluded women from obtaining financial assistance for their businesses.
The Ghana digital and innovation week brings together the private sector, civil society, policy makers and academia to showcase innovations in Ghana’s digital technologies, identify gaps and discuss opportunities to advance Ghana’s stake in the global digital economy.
The Ashanti Regional launch directed its focus at supporting women who dominate the informal SME space; to take advantage of digital technologies to grow their businesses.
According to the World Bank and the 2019 MasterCard Africa Business index, Ghana has the second highest number of women entrepreneurs in Africa constituting 44% of the countries Small Micro and Medium Scale Enterprises.
Executive director of She Hub Erica Adu Twumwaa Kyere underscored the power of digital innovations to catapult growth of women led businesses beyond the present statistics.
“One tool that can help women scale up their businesses is digital innovation. Our hope is that every woman who leaves here will know that I can use just my phone and the internet to create access to a bigger market and access to finances so that my business can thrive,” she noted.
The Ghana digital and innovation week is a tripartite collaboration between Ghana, Germany and Israel aimed at supporting the country attain its digitization ideals.
Component Manager of the GIZ Emmanuel Mumuni told Ultimate News, the German Government remains committed to supporting initiatives that eliminate gendered barriers that exclude women from fully participating in the fast growing digital economy.
“Women are in the majority in the MSME informal space constituting about 70% but they never really make a leap to become large businesses for many reasons including lack of access to finance and capacity building. if we are able to support them, it will naturally affect every sector of the economy,” Mumuni told reporter Ivan Heathcote – Fumador.
As part of the weeklong event; several women entrepreneurs were taken through digital literacy and introduced to funding sources and tools for accelerating their businesses.
Attendees had the opportunity to partake in a fair to exhibit their products and introduce people to their services.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Ivan Heathcote – Fumador
