Yofi Grant, GIPC boss
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has held the second edition of the young entreprenuers forum at the Labadi Beach Hotel in Accra.
The two-day forum brought together over 300 participants from across the country to learn and interact with captains in the industry.
The forum, under the theme “Connect, Accelerate and Grow: Phase two,” was aimed at providing a platform to continue the sensitization process of GIPC.
Speaking at the forum, Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Carlos Kingsley Ahenkorah said the government is eager to help build and promote young entreprenuers in the country.
According to him, the government has put in place an SME development plan as part of the 10 strategic agenda.
“These are some of the reasons why the government is thinking of putting up five incubation centres in about five of our universities so that our youth can be nurture and mentored by people while still in school,” he said.
He said the Trade Ministry is also coming up with a number of initiatives like the Ghana start-up programme which will be launched in August to help groom young people to become good entrepreneurs and take hold of their economic lives.
He advised the young people to develop themselves into private entreprenuers rather than always looking for only white collar jobs to survive.
“Help make Ghana the best place to do business in Africa,” he told the participants at the forum.
He also congratulated GIPC and its partners for setting up such forum to provide leadership and entrepreneurship training for young entreprenuers.
On his part, Chief Executive Officer of Ampromfi Group, Kwaku Ampromfi, spoke about how SMEs could attract the right finances for themselves.
According to him, research has shown that 90% of start-ups and 75% of Venture Capital (VC) funded start-ups failed due to legal challenges, bad location, pricing/cost issues, lost of focus, wrong team members, inadequate cash and many others.
He encouraged the young entrepreneur participants to shift their focus on how to build strong team relationship and how to pivot their business ideas at the right time.
By Maame Anima Akowuah