Oil Marketing Company, Total Petroleum says it has invested GH?1 million to support the boldest and most innovative young entrepreneurs in the country.
This, it revealed at the launch of the second edition of the Total Startupper of the Year Challenge.
According to Project Coordinator of the Challenge, Bright Dokosi, the investment is part of the company’s corporate social responsibility which seeks to support innovative but financially-challenged entrepreneurs in the country.
He said the winners would receive an amount of GH?180,000 as support to their business.
“For the second edition, the investment that has gone into it is GH?1.1 million; this is aside from the prize money of GH?180,000 which will be going to the winners,” he said.
On his part, Managing Director of Total Ghana, Eric Fanchini, said the second edition of the Challenge would give female entrepreneurs the edge. He said women accounted for about one-third of the winners globally.
He said, “We now have 55 participating countries and this time around in addition to the three ultimate winners, we are going to select the top female entrepreneur; we want to give women entrepreneurs an extra push as it’s aligned with other Total initiatives.”
Meanwhile, in his keynote address, Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has urged Total Ghana and other companies, to support startuppers into the formalization of their work.
“I would want to see most of these businesses registered, they have their permits, they have their registration numbers and then they have proper addresses to wherever they are working and people they engage should also be enrolled on the SSNIT scheme so that at least one day when they are up there, when they attain their retirement age, they would be able to access their pensions.”
Mr Baffour Awuah, however, lauded Total Petroleum for the initiative for its contribution to employment in the country.
The ultimate winner of the first edition of the challenge and Chief Executive of Groital Farms, Joshua Ayinbora, in an interview with JoyBusiness, said the initiative has helped in the growth of his business.
“Before we joined the Total Startupper we were just 17 acres of farm size and now as we speak we have about 32 fully-planted acres, we are starting about 50-acre plantation of moringa trees in the Upper East Region and we are also engaged in other agricultural research policies and consultancies that we are doing for people on the side; in terms of employment.
Currently, we provide employment for 12 full-time staff, four of whom are graduates and then we also have employment for about 20 part-time people that we hire consistently, 50 per cent of whom are women not counting the hired labour that we do once a while in various areas of our work,” he said.
The French Ambassador to Ghana, Anne Sophie Ave, who was the special guest at the event, said the Total Startupper Challenge is a step further in strengthening the ties both countries.
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