The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has extended its entrepreneurship support programme to 72 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana.
The support is in line with the Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE) programme implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft Fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in partnership with the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI).
It is under the second phase of the SCORE programme which focuses on training and coaching waste management and recycling as well as women-led or women-owned businesses.
The programme aims to help the beneficiaries scale up their productivity, become internationally competitive and continue to increase in sustainable and decent job creation in the country.
The beneficiaries would be selected from five regions: Greater Accra, Eastern, Central, Western and Ashanti.
Mr John Duti, the team leader of Invest for Jobs, a programme run by GIZ, said, “It is important that Ghanaian SMEs, who form the backbone of our economy, constituting 85% of businesses and contributing about 70% of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are given the necessary capacity building in these areas to boost their productivity and help them create decent jobs.”
“This is the goal of invest for Jobs” he added during the launch of the second phase of the SCORE programme and workshop for the beneficiaries as reported by the GNA
He noted that there was a shift toward environmental sustainability and green agenda, which was the core message of the SCORE programme in improving productivity through resource efficiency and cleaner production.
SCORE is an International Labour Organization (ILO) global programme to improve productivity and working conditions of SMEs with practical classroom and in-factory consulting with support from GIZ’s Invest for Jobs programme.
The first phase of SCORE programme
The training and support given to 60 SMEs and 30 micro-enterprises improved working conditions for over 400 employees.
In 2021, Invest for Jobs through GIZ Ghana signed a grant agreement with the MDPI to train 90 SMEs in Greater Accra, Central and Western regions to boost their resource efficiency, productivity and their job-creation abilities.
With the support of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), Switzerland and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), SCORE was introduced first in Ghana in 2011.
