Under its Womenpreneur pitch-a-ton Africa initiative, Access Bank Plc has trained 50 womenprenuers across Africa.
The bank, which graduated 50 women entrepreneurs across Africa, said the participants were put through a mini Masters in Business Administration (MBA) programme by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.
During the capacity building, five womenprenuers were rewarded with cash prizes. RUGSAL Trading, from Sierra Leon came first in with N5 million reward, Babet Agro Enterprise, from Ghana won N2 million while Readland, a subsidiary of EMIANCIS from Nigeria, won N1 million.
Others are NICNAX Company Limited which came fourth position and won N750,000 and eCOBbA Africa Limited, from Zambia won N500,000.
Launched in 2019, the Womenpreneur pitch-a-ton Africa was the first women-in-business support initiative of its kind in the industry offered by the Access Bank W Initiative.
The programme, in its second edition, had over 40,000 applications which were later pruned down to 50 participants who took part in the free mini Masters in Business Administration (MBA) certification programme.
The Womenpreneur Pitch-a-ton Africa 2020 campaign was designed to provide female owned businesses across Africa an opportunity to access to finance and world-class business trainings as well as mentoring opportunities. This programme has been designed to create an enabling environment for female entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.
This year’s programme was extended to six other African countries where Access Bank’s W Initiative has its presence. These countries are Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Gambia.
Mr Victor Etuokwu, Executive Director, Retail Banking, Access Bank, while speaking at the virtual event, said the Access Bank has been inspiring women since 2006 and that the Womenpreneur-pitch-a- ton Africa is a demonstration of how highly placed the bank sees women, especially, women in business.
“We created the W Initiative to drive the course of women and the Womenpreneur-pitch-a- ton Africa is a brainchild of the W Initiative. I need to stress here that we saw great qualities in all the 50 participants in this year’s programme and i want to say that they are rare women. We are happy to assist them and we are very sure that they will impact the business world positively”, Etuokwu said.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
