Initiative to support female social entrepreneurs launched

An initiative to explore opportunities and access to funding for female social entrepreneurs has been launched in Accra.

Dubbed, SE Ghana Social Thursday Celebration, the initiative is to help accelerate growth for businesses in the social enterprises space in the country. It was introduced by Social Enterprise (SE) Ghana in collaboration with British Council.

Launching the initiative at a virtual event on March 18 in Accra, the Senior Investor Officer at GroFin Ghana, Mr. Abraham Mensah-Belley, said “SMEs are the drivers of change; it is, therefore, essential to invest in SMEs that are ready to scale up especially women.”

“The SE Ghana Social Thursday Celebration is to explore opportunities and access to funding for women social entrepreneurs to aid in business growth and acceleration.”

Although over 50 percent of social enterprises are women-led and contribute significantly to Ghana’s economic growth, access to funding has been a challenge, and one of the factors hindering these businesses to thrive.

For this reason, the Social Thursday celebration is designed to look at various finance options for women entrepreneurs such as debt, equity, or grants, and available financing and support to structure their businesses to be able to pass the strict requirements of funders.

The Social Thursday celebration dived into issues of debt products available in Ghana and how to access them; equity products available in Ghana and how to access them; and what social enterprises need to do to comply with all laws and access all government benefits.

Capacity building programmes such as access to finance accelerator have introduced 36 women-led social enterprises to eight weeks of business coaching.

Social Enterprise Ghana and the British Council continue to support exchanges, forums, capacity building, and policy dialogues that seek to support social entrepreneurs especially led and managed by women.