Let’s set up Social Enterprise, Innovation Fund to support business – Stakeholders

 Stakeholders have underscored the need to set up Social Enterprise and Inno­vation Fund to sup­port businesses and innovations geared toward using business principles to solve social and environmental challenges in the country while creating jobs and making profit.

The stakeholders disclosed this at a day’s validation workshop on feasibility studies on social enter­prise and innovation fund organ­ised by Social Enterprise Ghana in collaboration with Challenges Ghana in Accra on Thursday.

The workshop with support from European Union under the investment Climate Reforms Facil­ity, being implemented by British Council, aimed to review and provide feedback on the findings from the feasibility studies and propose a skeletal social enterprise and innovation funding model.

The Executive Director, Social Enterprise Ghana, Mr Edwin Zu-Cudjoe, said access to fund­ing was a major challenge facing businesses in the sector, especially women enterpreneurs and green businesses.

According to him, their capital requirements were very minimum between $500 to about $15,000, hence making it difficult for finan­cial service providers to support the sector, with the belief that they would not be able to make relevant returns or profit needed.

“But we believe that these are the categories of businesses that are creating the jobs and making impacts, relevant and necessary for the sustainable development of our economy,” he added.

Mr Zu-Cudjoe called on financial institutions, government agencies, research institutions and policy­makers, to begin to look at the social enterprise business commu­nity, about how they could come up with new financial products and services that could meet the needs of the underserved social entrepre­neurs in the sector.

Mr Abraham Mensah-Belley, Investment Manager, Venture Capital Trust Fund Ghana, for his part, said setting up the fund would bring special focus towards ensuring that enterprises that were making necessary impact for the development of the country were adequately funded to expand scale up and get better at their activities.

He indicated that over the years, social enterprises have not received any form of funding in a form of loan, equity or grant, with the reason, among others, being that no policy in Ghana defines social enterprise and Ghanaian laws and policies do not have room for social enterprises.

However, Mr Mensah noted that the challenge of funding could be resolved through the establish­ment of the Social Enterprise and Innovation Fund which would also serve as an incentive for social innovation and social entrepre­neurship.

Ms Kezia Bibah, Associate, Challenges Ghana, in a presen­tation on the feasibility studies, proposed that Enterprise Ghana advocate for an Employee Stock Option (ESO) managed fund for efficiency, and seek partner framework that mandates the fund to actively enhance the capacity of selected ESOs in Ghana.

 BY VIVIAN ARTHUR

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