On 30th of March 2023, UGEFA was invited to participate in the "Women Entrepreneurship for Africa (WE4A) Programme 2nd Networking Event" at Hotel Africana in Kampala. At the networking event, the participants of the WE4A were joined by selected stakeholders from the private and public sector in order to network and share knowledge and opportunities. The theme of the event was the role of business incubation and acceleration in sustaining MSMEs in Uganda.
At the beginning, every participant had the opportunity to introduce themselves. The event was officially opened by the Employment and Skills Development in Africa (E4D) team. An overview of the training and mentorship sessions was given by Solid Rock Life and Business Limited, followed by ICON presenting possibilities to access finance. Then a panel discussion took place, where Alumnus and other stakeholders from the private and public sector discussed challenges and available further acceleration and incubation support possibilities. The last part of the event consisted of a speed marketing session, where participants were able to connect with other stakeholders and programmes.
There was a strong interest by the participants to learn more about UGEFA and explore the possibility to join and access financing. Besides UGEFA, Florence Adong from the UGEFA-supported enterprise Matching Needs joined the event. Matching Needs is based in Gulu and processes groundnuts into peanut butter and works with around 100 women smallholder farmers. At the event, Matching Needs also had the possibility to present their products to other participants and share more about their experience with the UGEFA Programme.
The WE4A Programme is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Employment and Skills Development in Africa (E4D), SAFEEM (Swiss Association for Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets) and Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) on behalf of the European Union (EU), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS). The Programme aims to enhance supplier development and value chains for female entrepreneurs. It was launched in October 2021 and currently its in the stage of ongoing trainings for at least 100 female entrepreneurs to support them to grow and scale their impact.
