Madam Eunice Dewi Adjei, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of WeRise Network, says the organisation has reached more than 5,000 women and young entrepreneurs across 12 regions in Ghana, through its entrepreneurship and business development initiatives.
She said about 70 per cent of the beneficiaries were young women, adding that the programmes were designed to help entrepreneurs move from informal businesses to formal, sustainable and scalable enterprises.
Madam Adjei was speaking at the WeRise Network’s Annual General Meeting on the theme: “Rise and Scale: Celebrating Growth, Building Revenue, Creating Jobs.”
She said the organisation’s interventions focused on capacity building, business formalisation, business acceleration and digital skills development, with training tailored to the needs and growth stages of individual businesses.
She said in partnership with the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA), WeRise facilitated the formal registration of 3,632 women-owned businesses, enabling them to gain access to opportunities associated with formalisation, including finance and market expansion.
Madam Adjei explained that the Yenzi Ghana Mall, an initiative under the BizFox Project, recorded more than GH¢1 million in vendor sales last year, while sales had exceeded GH¢2.1 million in the current year, with more than 300 active vendors offering about 2,000 Made-in-Ghana products.
The initiative had also created about 147 jobs, with each beneficiary earning an average of GH¢1,000 monthly, describing the development as evidence of the direct impact of enterprise development on livelihoods.
The CEO said through the DigiVibe Business Booster, 209 women-led businesses in Accra and Kumasi received practical training in digital marketing, e-commerce and online payments, while 55 vendors from more than nine regions were trained to accept digital payments through MojoPay.
She said 22 of the 55 vendors had subsequently been onboarded onto the MojoPay e-commerce platform, while 155 young women had been screened and submitted for placement under the TechServe initiative, which connects skilled young women and national service graduates to Ghanaian startups.
Madam Adjei stated that the organisation aimed to place at least 400 young women in decent information and communications technology-related jobs, while expanding digital inclusion and access to financial services and markets.
She said WeRise would also deepen financial literacy programmes covering savings, pensions and investment readiness, while creating more market opportunities through exhibitions, pop-up activities and digital promotion of women-owned businesses.
Madam Juliana Bemah Adubofour, the Head of the Women Entrepreneurial Development Directorate of the GEA, commended WeRise for creating a platform for women entrepreneurs to connect, learn, collaborate and grow.
She noted that although women-owned businesses contributed significantly to Ghana’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, they continued to face challenges, including limited access to finance, markets, business knowledge, technology, networks and opportunities to scale.
Madam Adubofour urged women entrepreneurs to take advantage of training and networking opportunities and pay attention to record-keeping, financial management, branding, customer service and digitalisation as their businesses expanded.
She said the GEA remained committed to working with WeRise, the Mastercard Foundation and other stakeholders to create an enabling environment for women-owned businesses to become competitive, sustainable and growth-oriented enterprises.
She said their growth would create jobs, strengthen families and communities, and contribute to national economic development.
