Five SMEs receive $ 25,000 support from Design and Technology Institute
A total of $25,000 has been disbursed to five business learners in the Small and Meduim Size Enterprises sector as seed capital to support their business ideas under the Design and Technology Institute(DTI)’s Community Innovative Project.
The five are Master Kraft who received $ 10,000, Tom SB $ 7,000, Quickserve$ 5,000, FIRM-JZ and Nine Tech Engineers – AdvansRule received $ 1,500 respectively.
They participated in a community innovation competition organised by DTI after being carefully selected out of 15 teams who had undergone a six-month training in problem identification, research, ideation and prototype development which commenced on December 15, 2021.
The competition formed part of DTI’s three-year partnership with the Mastercard Foundation under the Young Africa Works “Transforming youth in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) livelihoods for sustainable jobs’’.
Speaking at the programme in Accra on Wednesday, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of DTI, Ms Constance Swaniker, said the project would provide 40,000 direct and indirect work opportunities for the youth in the country.
According to her, the competition was a business pitch and accelerator initiative designed to identify, recognise and support promising student-led enterprises with the potential to scale and create sustainable jobs for the teeming unemployed youth.
“The initiative honours learners with creative and innovative ideas in agriculture, water and sanitation, plastics recycling, e-waste, and other sectors of the economy. Participants, as part of the competition, were involved in in-depth research and engagement with communities to co-design solutions to address communal problems in a sustainable manner,” she added.
Ms Swaniker said the winners would graduate and advance with their prototypes into a six-month pre-acceleration programme.
The pre-acceleration programme she said would serve as a platform for the winners to gain extensive business management, financial and operational resources, and would be the catalyst for fund raising activities and investment opportunities at DTI.
Mr Mathew Tiata, leader of Master Kraft, the overall winner who developed a multi-purpose wheelchair for the aged and the physically challenged on behalf of his team expressed gratitude to DTI for the reward and pledged to invest it into their business to yield more returns.
BY VIVIAN ARTHUR
