Accra: The Grants Management Committee of the Adwumawura Programme has begun a nationwide pitching exercise for beneficiaries to present business ideas for grants to support their enterprises: The sessions are taking place in all 16 regions, involving beneficiaries from the 261 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
According to Ghana News Agency, a statement issued by the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) said the exercise would enable selected youth-owned businesses that had undergone a five-week entrepreneurship capacity-building programme to pitch their ideas to a panel of experts. The training focused on entrepreneurship and how to start and grow businesses.
The statement outlined that after the nationwide pitching exercise, at least 2,000 viable, scalable, and impactful businesses with the potential to create decent jobs would receive financial and input grants. The Grants Management Committee, inaugurated by the Minister of Youth Development and Empowerment, was mandated to select innovative, viable, scalable, and impactful businesses from 10,887 enterprises supported under the Adwumawura Programme.
The statement emphasized that the Committee was established to ensure that grant disbursement under the programme was equitable, merit-based, and impactful. The Committee urged beneficiaries to exercise patience during the rigorous selection process to ensure that businesses chosen for the grants were viable and scalable to deliver the required economic impact. 'Because these best-practice approach of selecting beneficiaries is in line with the RESET agenda,' it said.
The statement further mentioned that the programme required the Committee to rigorously select beneficiaries who could prudently and efficiently utilize the grants to create decent and sustainable jobs for the youth. The Committee was committed to selecting impactful, viable, and scalable youth-owned businesses to receive the grants. The statement added that the next step would be the award of grants to at least 2,000 viable, scalable, and impactful youth-owned businesses.