Six African countries including Ghana will be offered grants to support start-ups, expansion of businesses and social ventures, President Obama has announced.
He was speaking to young African leaders at the YALI initiative in Washington.
Congo, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Rwanda are the other countries to benefit from this initiative.
Over the next two years Ghanaian entrepreneurs will benefit from a host of initiatives that will see the US Government expanding support to them by connecting them to investors, advisors, and distribution networks in the US and across the world.
Next year, the US State Department will also lead three partnership opportunity delegations of entrepreneurs and investors to Ghana a, Tanzania and Ethiopia.
In addition, the State Department and the U.S. Africa Development Foundation (USADF) will support selected Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) entrepreneurs to attend and participate in the DEMO Africa 2014 conference, to be held in Lagos, Nigeria, on September 25 – 26.
DEMO Africa is a platform for top African companies to launch their products and announce to Africa and the world what they have developed.
Speaking to the YALI participants Prez Obama said the United States will continue to provide young Africans access to resources they can use to put their skills to work in service of their communities.
Meanwhile hundreds of new entrepreneurship grants will be dished out to African entrepreneurs.
The USADF will partner with the US State Department to offer $2.5 million in seed funding to members of the YALI Network over the next three years in the form of 250 small entrepreneurship grants.
These grants will support start-ups and expansion of businesses and social ventures in six countries in 2015 including Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Rwanda.
Business World (with notes from citifmonline)