Author: Beyonce Diamond Kpogli
In line with Government’s effort to support start-ups in the country, the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) has today launched a Hub acceleration Grant Programme.
The Hub grant programme is 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.
Chief Executive Officer of NEIP, Eric Kofi Nkansah at the launch said the hub will be supported to run programs that would benefit firms and startups within the communities
Mr Nkansah said the grant program, will competitively select a number of hubs that will be provided Technical assistance and capacity building to address gaps identified during the benchmarking exercise.
He added that the selected Hubs will receive grants of up to $200,000 to support and build their capacities to standards befitting of an international hub.
“The Ghanaian start-up landscape has seen tremendous growth in the number of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Hubs over the last decade. Despite this positive growth in the ecosystem, the hubs that are nurturing our emerging start-ups have some issues and therefore need support to be able to grow more businesses, hence the implementation of the Hubs Acceleration Grant Programme (HAGP) by the Government with the support of the World Bank”, he explained.
Call For Application
This call is open to all the Incubation and Entrepreneurship Hubs in the country, including business incubators, accelerators, technology Centers, University Hubs and other entrepreneurship support organisations.
Prospective Applicants can go on the website, www.neip.gov.gh and apply. The HAGP will focus on the Hubs operating in the following sectors: Agriculture, technology & innovation, Light manufacturing & processing, waste & green businesses and technical and vocational-oriented Hubs.
He, therefore, commended H.E the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, for his continuous support for the growth of the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, and for his various interventions to ignite and unleash the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of young people in a bid to mark the conscious departure from job seeking to job creation and job ownership.
