Business Dev. Ministry to Raise Funds for Female Entrepreneurs

By Cliff Ekuful

The Ministry for Business Development will hold a fundraising gala to support physically challenged female entrepreneurs to enable them establish or expand their business operations.

The event scheduled to take place on Thursday, November 29, 2018 would seek to raise an amount of GH2million from individuals and corporate organisations.

It would be chaired by the First Lady, Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo.

Speaking to the Ghanaian Times on the sidelines of a health walk organised by the ministry in Accra on Saturday, the sector Minister, Dr Ibrahim Mohammed Awal said the initiative was in line with the vision of the President of the Republic to promote an inclusive society where equal opportunities would be created for every Ghanaian.

He said statistics available indicated that nearly five per cent of the country's population was made up of people with physical disabilities, out of which majority of them were women.

Dr Awal said even though some Ghanaians with disability have given up on life thus resorted to begging for alms and other negative practices, there were a few who have braced the odds to live meaningful lives.

It was in recognition of these that he had been tasked by the President to find innovative ways to support those persons with disabilities, especially the women to improve on their various fields of endeavour.

The minister said the fund raising gala would be part of activities by his ministry to bring relief to the women, stressing that; "we have designed a number of programmes including; identifying women with disability but have their own businesses, train them and build their capacities in their activities.

He said the fund realised would be used to support the women and this would be done based on assessment, adding that "it will surprise you that for some of our disabled mothers and sisters, all they require to expand their businesses may be as low as GH1,000 while, others may require higher than that so we will assess them based on their needs and capacity to handle those monies."

Dr Awal said government was concerned about the empowerment of women due to their phenomenal contributions to socio-economic development and would work hard to build an inclusive society with special emphasis on women.

He said government was hopeful that once a lot of success stories of such persons were known, it would encourage others in similar situations to believe in themselves and come to terms with the fact that disability was not inability.

Dr Awal therefore called on all well meaning Ghanaians to support government in that direction for the common good of all.

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