Over the past four years, the business incubation programme has equipped emerging businesses with the technical know-how to run a successful business beyond the incubation period, in addition to providing them with prudent managerial skills.

The three incubatees for Cohort Five include; Goldranch Trading Enterprise, The Water Chain, and Naforit Ventures.
Mr Raphael Koomson, the Business Development Manager at Duapa Werkspace, explained during the launch that needs assessments on various SMEs showed a lack of business management skills, including negotiation, leadership, relationship building, as well as analytical thinking, and business modeling.

“We are going to take them through all of these pieces of training and also help them with their compliance with regulatory authorities such as the Food and Drugs Board, the Ghana Revenue Authority, and the Standard Authority, among others,” said Mr. Koomson.

The training would also expose the participants to what investors required through documentation to make them investment ready.

The Cohort would undergo group and individual sessions, mentorship, and coaching to help address their specific business aspirations and needs.

Mr. Koomson added that, the Monitoring and Evaluation team would undertake periodic business visits “to ensure that they are actually implementing whatever we are taking them through because the goal is to get them to go through a transformation process, which will make their businesses ready to scale and to also access investment opportunities.”

Mr Emmanuel Martey, the Business Development and Market Linkages Officer for SNV Ghana, Takoradi Office, said “The focus of the project is to shape businesses and the lives of returning migrants pursuing economic activities in the green space. The project has impacted the lives of many SMEs in the two implementing regions: the Western and Ashanti regions.”

Mr. Martey encouraged the new cohort to avail themselves for the training and to take it seriously to impact their businesses positively.

Mr. Erasmus Mensah-Ackon, the Executive Director of Duapa Werkspace, also encouraged the group to think outside the box and develop projects and businesses that would improve upon lives.

He advised them to make good use of the digital space to acquire more knowledge and skills that would improve upon their managerial practices.