Ghana Hubs Network with support from Make-IT in Africa, a programme implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Corporation and Development (BMZ) has revealed in its 2022 plan a support scheme for innovation hubs and startups in Ghana.

The programme dubbed, ‘Digitalization and Hubs Capacity Strengthening Programme’, has been initiated to help strengthen member hubs in its network to improve sustainability of hubs and increase the percentage of successful and investment-ready start-ups in the country.

The programme will be focused on three main areas: Database Development, Hubs Capacity Building and Talent Exchange. This move will help bridge the gap in developing digitally enabled systems for data gathering, analysis and evidence-based decision making as well as enhancing the capacity of innovation hubs to deliver on their business and service models.

Expectations

The benefits of the project include influencing policy with evidence, increased investments for startups due to consistency of services, products model delivery opportunities and support from a mix of private sector, academia and governmental sectors through technical expertise and support from GIZ.

This project will build up on past flagship projects implemented by the network in collaboration with various ecosystem actors.

One of the flagship project -The “25 days of Wow project” in 2019 - brought together about 32 hubs for a cross-regional tour to engage entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in co-creating a National Entrepreneurship Policy.

This has been followed up with the 'Hub Resiliency' project which helped selected hubs to identify their key competencies & explore models for local business solutions. The programme which was implemented in collaboration with Ashesi University also served as a Covid-19 relief activity for hubs in Ghana.

With so much potential residing with local hubs in communities, the network is implementing the Digitalization and Hubs Capacity Strengthening Programme as a hub centric approach to amplifying the work of its member hubs to achieve higher standards of service delivery.