NEIP votes GH¢40m for innovation hubs

The National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) has provided GH¢40 million to 30 entrepreneurship and innovation hubs across the country.

The grant programme is to support the development of the entrepreneurship ecosystem by building the capacities of entrepreneurship hubs to bring up the quality of their services to international standards.

The selected hubs, which received up to GH¢2 million, will be supported to run programmes that would benefit firms and startups within various communities in the country.

The Chief Executive of NEIP, Kofi Ofosu Nkansah, disclosed the details to the Daily Graphic when he signed the agreement with the various hubs at a ceremony in Accra last Friday.

“This is a grant programme to support the development of the entrepreneurship ecosystem by building the capacities of entrepreneurship hubs to bring the quality of their services up to international standards,” he added.

Dubbed “Hubs Acceleration Grant Programme”, the ceremony was witnessed by officials from the World Bank Country office, the Project Coordinating Unit (PCU) of the Ghana Economic Transformation Project (GETP), the Project Consultants from Deloitte and the Ghana Hubs Network.

Mr Nkansah explained that the latest grant was under component three of the government’s GETP, which was being supported by the World Bank.

He added that the support was aimed at addressing the limited development of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and an ecosystem for supporting entrepreneurship.

That, he explained, included early-stage financing to strengthen a growth model conducive to economic transformation to attract higher levels of investment as well as enhance productivity and growth of the economy.

The beneficiaries would be provided with technical assistance and capacity-building to address gaps identified during a benchmarking exercise. 

Selection

Mr Nkansah noted that the beneficiaries were selected based on factors such as being legally registered in Ghana, being 100 per cent Ghanaian owned, must have operated as an Enterprise Support Organisation in the country for at least three years.

For other selection criteria, the beneficiary hubs must have core expertise in entrepreneurship support and business acceleration, must be able to present a qualified and competent team of business development experts, mentors, trainers and must be able to demonstrate standard business practices such as good corporate governance, bookkeeping, accounting and so on.

Hubs Network

The President of the Ghana Hubs Network, Josiah Eyison, commended the role NEIP had played since 2017 to enhance the capacities of hubs in the ecosystem.

He said although the money was a grant, the hubs would work hard to pay back in the form of innovation, employment and overall improvement in the economy.

The GEPT Component Three Specialist, Alhaji Mahmoud Tahir, advised the hubs to make conscious efforts to utilise the funds by making a great positive impact on the economy.

He charged the hub beneficiaries to adopt modern corporate governance practices in running their businesses.

The Coordinator of the Project Coordinating Unit (PCU), Franklin Ashiadey, commended the hubs and advised them to take advantage of the opportunity to create legacies. He also encouraged them to create the space for ideation and to move those ideas to the market.

The Lead Consultant of the project, Francis Opoku Mensah, advised the hubs to pay back the grant in kind through employment, creation and nurturing of innovative ideas to benefit the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem.