The Kosmos Innovation
Center (KIC) and the Mastercard Foundation held a three-day Bootcamp in Kumasi
for 108 aspiring young women entrepreneurs within the Agri-MSME sector.
The KIC Women’s Bootcamp is part of the capacity building program under the KIC
and Mastercard Foundation’s multi-year partnership to train the next generation
of young leaders and agriculture entrepreneurs.
The Bootcamp seeks to create a pipeline of empowered women in the agriculture
ecosystem as well as build the capacity of participants in the AgriTech
Challenge.
The three-day event was facilitated by 16 external trainers and mentors,
specifically selected to share their diverse experience in a broad range of
areas, including agripreneurship; opportunities in the agriculture value chain
for women; tech applications to agribusiness; presentation skills, and design
thinking; among others. Participants were taken through various business and
managerial topics, all aimed at enhancing their self-employability and investor
readiness.
Participants were also exposed to the opportunities in Ghana's agribusiness
value chain and how they can make the most of these opportunities to be leading
players within different value chains.
“The impact of the KIC Women’s Bootcamp continues to serve as a motivational
factor for the organization. It is the goal of KIC and its partners to empower
more young women to create decent jobs for themselves and their peers, and we
see the Bootcamp as one of the avenues for driving this change. The Bootcamp
also aligns with the organization’s vision of empowering women to thrive and
feel equipped to establish themselves in Ghana's Agri-MSMEs sector. We want to
scale up the presence of women by inspiring them and opening them up to all the
opportunities within the field," said Benjamin Gyan-Kesse, the Executive
Director of KIC.
“The successful completion of this year's Bootcamp is a demonstration of the
commitment of both organizations to help strengthen and shape the future of
women entrepreneurs within the agriculture and agriculture adjacent sectors in
Ghana,” he concluded.
The three-day Bootcamp concluded with a hackathon where participants used their
new skills to identify and solve a practical problem within and outside the
agriculture value-chain in Ghana. Some of the participants are expected to join
the KIC AgriTech Challenge after the Bootcamp, while others have committed to
use the knowledge acquired in their current work.
The Ghana Country Head at the Mastercard Foundation, Rosy Fynn, said: “Young
Ghanaians are the catalysts for Ghana’s transformation and our partnership with
the KIC is centred on 1 training the next generation of young
leaders, especially young women, in the agriculture and adjacent sector. As we
build the capacity of young people, we give them the skills and tools to drive
transformation and innovation in the sector to create work opportunities for
themselves and their peers.”
Earlier this year, the Mastercard Foundation and KIC announced the launch of a
multi-year partnership to train the next generation of young leaders and
entrepreneurs in Ghana’s agriculture sector. Key aspects of the program include:
· AgriTech Challenge
Classic – a 7-month annual training program aimed at building the entrepreneurial
mindset of students and young graduates. Over the next four years, the expanded
version of the AgriTech Challenge is expected to train about 4,700 young people
across Ghana through relationships with regional academic partners, such as
universities and technical schools.
· AgriTech Challenge Pro –
a 5-month acceleration program aimed at equipping existing early-stage teams or
AgriTech start-ups with the right tools, funding, and support to bring their
business ideas or products to market and prepare them to scale. The program was
developed to train teams advancing from the AgriTech Challenge Classic, as well
as others from the broader start-up ecosystem in Ghana.
· Incubation – the KIC
Incubation is a multi-year business incubation program aimed at preparing
businesses for growth, scale, and investor readiness. The incubation program
involves more focused business training, specialized coaching and mentorship,
networking, a physical workspace, and access to technical expertise. Six
businesses will be selected annually to receive between US$10,000 and $50,000
in funding, physical office space, and continuous support from the KIC.
Throughout the incubation, the KIC will invest in capacity building programs to
equip entrepreneurs with specialized mentorship using local industry experts.
· Business Booster – a
5-month program that spurs the growth of existing Micro-, Small, and
Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in agriculture and agriculture adjacent
sectors in Ghana that have demonstrated potential and are ready to scale. The
Business Booster program supports improvements in structure and operations and
investor readiness by facilitating business relationships, networking,
mentorship, business development support, and coaching. The program’s goal is
to accelerate the development of 900 MSMEs over four years.
· Blue Skies School Farm of
The Year Competition – the School Farm of the Year Competition works by
enabling secondary schools to compete against each other by managing and
sustaining their own farms to win prizes and to be awarded the title of School
Farm of the Year. This competition aims to develop the interest of young people
in agriculture through practical training and exposure. The program will
leverage school farms as models to teach and demonstrate innovations emerging
from the KIC, while supporting the training of teachers on how to apply these
solutions.
The first KIC Women’s Bootcamp was organized in March this year, with 68 women
from 5 local universities in attendance.
Source: Peacefmonline.com