Ghana Enterprises Agency and IE Africa Centre (IE University, Spain) have announced a partnership to promote the economic empowerment of women in Ghana by focusing on providing leadership and development training for women entrepreneurs. Empowering women is one of the most crucial concerns of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations. To help address the challenges women face and to help build a resilient economy, the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) which provides business development, advisory and financial support services to entrepreneurs in the MSME sector, has put in a place interventions that specifically target the economic empowermentof women in Ghana.
GEA recently launched the Women Entrepreneurs Rise (WERise), a platform created to bring successful female leaders and enablers together, for professional networking, skills development, and knowledge sharing. Now GEA is partnering with IE Africa Center, an academic center belonging to IE University to provide leadership and development training programs. IE Africa Center has already provided leadership training to GEA’s executive team to equip them with skills that will allow the organisation to realise its full potential. This partnership is now being extended to include professional development for women entrepreneurs.
Speaking on the partnership, CEO of the Ghana Enterprises Agency, Mrs Kosi Yankey-Ayeh said “leadership and development are crucial to drive entrepreneurship, so we need to partner with leading global universities such as IE University for institutional growth and development.” IE Africa Center adopts a systems change approach to entrepreneurship and leadership training, encouraging executives, teams and leaders to address policies, mindsets, or power dynamics that underlie societal issues at stake. To drive systems change at scale across the continent, IE Africa Center collaborates with and supports strategic institutions such as the GEA with systems change coaching. “Ghana is a key country for the IE Africa Center because of their high numbers of woman owned businesses, exceptional political leadership and shared values.” IE Africa Center Director, Begoña Gomez Fernandez explained IE Africa Center Chair, Felicia Appenteng, said: “The Center’s mission is to shine a light on African solutions to global challenges, as such we’re extremely proud to partner with the Ghana Enterprises Agency, to identify, nurture and support African entrepreneurs as they spark systems change.”
