She also asked that an advisory council be established with women entrepreneurs made an integral part of it, to enable them to feed in their input.

Dr Akuffobea-Essilfie, with the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-STEPRI), made the call at a policy dialogue on MSME Innovation Support Programmes and their Impacts in Ghana in Accra.
It was on the theme “Evidence to Action: Enhancing MSME Innovation Support for Inclusive Enterprise Development in Ghana”.
The dialogue formed part of the Distributional Impact of Innovation and SME support in Ghana project, which sought to generate empirical evidence and strengthen institutional capacity for innovation policy and MSME Support evaluation.

She also suggested that a participatory budget was made for women entrepreneurs with disability regarding programming, to cover their needs and for the capacity of key players like politicians and heads of government offices to be built to embrace inclusivity of the marginalized in their programming.

Dr Akuffobea-Essilfie said key insights showed that while some policies aimed to support such women, implementation gaps often hindered the progress or success of the programme.
Among the gaps were limited access to tailored funding support (support that did not distinguish women entrepreneurs with disability), explaining that the situation prevented them from getting access to funds as the funding agencies doubted their capacities to repay the funds.
Lack of infrastructure like sewing and knitting machines, lack of monitoring of interventions, and lack of inclusive business training where they were separated and given different attention were missing in action, she said.

Dr Akuffobea-Essilfie suggested that female entrepreneurs with disability in MSMEs got access to credit facilities with low interest and flexible payment terms and an establishment of a public private partnership to promote adaptable infrastructure and accessible working space for the women with special needs to operate and thrive.

Nana Osei-Bonsu, the Chief Executive Officer, Private Enterprise Federation, said the business environment was losing innovation, data and policy directives and research with empirical data.

“The private business people do business to make money and bring in new hands to expand the business for profit. The private sector is a vehicle for economic growth and not a vehicle for creating jobs,” he said.
He admonished government to find a common ground to ensure that MSMEs were empowered with the right resources, empirical data and venture capital to make businesses thrive.

Dr Justina Onumah, a Senior Research Scientist and the Head of the Agriculture, Medicine and Environment Research Division, CSIR-STEPRI, advised that NEIP gathered the profiles of MSMEs when they applied for funding to be able to prepare the right modules for them and to be able to monitor their innovativeness and capability.

In designing government’s “Edwumawura programme”, she asked that the NEIP was intentional about investing rightly in businesses to yield the required objectives.

“The numbers are not what will make government get the impact. For instance, giving each of them like 10,000 for a year might not be enough. We need to make sure the applicants are prepared well for the market, have export readiness, technology advancement and innovativeness,” she said.