Stakeholders in Ghana’s social entrepreneurship space have met to review the draft document of the Ghana Social Enterprise Policy (GSEP) developed by the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
The event, held in Accra, is the second within six months and was put together by Social Enterprise Ghana to afford the stakeholders the opportunity to make inputs that will promote the operations of social entrepreneurs and boost impact investing.
Edwin Zu-Cudjoe, the Executive Director of Social Enterprise Ghana in his welcome address said he was hopeful that draft policy will be finalized and submitted to Cabinet by the end of 2021.
The Coordinator for Social Enterprises at the British Council, Andrew Entsua-Mensah remarked that the deliberations on the policy was an important step in helping to ensure a resilient ecosystem for social enterprises and impact investments in Ghana to provide funding for young enterprises.
He said the British Council continues to support organizations such as Social Enterprise Ghana to enable them to advance the interest of social enterprises in Ghana.
“We’re investing heavily on partnering with bodies such as SE Ghana to help with this policy drive… The dialogue today I believe will bring insightful input on the way forward in ensuring that enterprises within the economy can be guided and supported in getting the right information and funding tools or instruments.”
Mr. Ofori Asante Agyei, the Principal Commercial Officer of the Ministry of Trade and Industry who delivered a highlight of the current draft policy stressed that such an exercise was important to boost the confidence of investors in putting in funds to support social enterprises.
According to Amma Lartey, the CEO of Impact Investing Ghana, there are significant gaps in Ghana’s development that requires private capital to address.
She was of the view that while Ghana had made significant progress in its socio-economic development, the COVID-19 pandemic reversed some of the country’s gains and efforts must be made to quickly recover.
She said some developmental issues that are critical and can be tackled through impact investing include unemployment and inadequate health infrastructure among other environmental and social challenges.
“All over the world, all countries are working towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and it is universally accepted that without private investing these goals will not be achieved and so it is important that in Ghana we begin to see how we can drive private capital both local and foreign in specific sectors where we see some of these deficits,” she noted.
In 2017, Social Enterprise Ghana (SE Ghana), the industry association for social enterprises in Ghana successfully engaged the Ministry of Trade for the creation of a draft Social Enterprise Policy. Since then, the field of Impact Investing has grown in Ghana with SE Ghana serving on a taskforce to set up Impact Investing Ghana, a private sector initiative to drive impact investing in Ghana which aims to catalyze $1 billion in investments into Impact Investing over the next 5 years.
IIGh is a member of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investing (GSG). Social Enterprise Ghana and Impact Investing Ghana are advocating for expansion of the draft social enterprise policy into a social enterprise and impact investing policy for submission to cabinet in 2021.
Source: citinewsroom.com