The Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has called for capacity development programmes for entrepreneurs in the informal sector.

Rev. Ogbarmey Tetteh believes skills training for players in the space has become necessary to help eliminate poverty in the country.

Speaking at the launch of Pesewa Link mobile app, an online application designed to ensure easy business transaction between informal sector businesses and their customers, he said entrepreneur skills is key to the country’s development.

“We need to have a paradigm shift where attention is given to the informal economy and lot at schemes and measures that can be used to propel those in the sector to come up,” he said.

The informal sector in the country employs 80 percent of the population and a research by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) credits the sector with 90 percent of recent jobs created in the economy.

This is the basis for Rev Ogbarmey’s argument that technological skills development for entrepreneurs in the informal sector can help local product compete on the international market.

He believes this will “enable them to give out their best in terms of skills, vision and talents they have to offer in building companies and to create wealth that will help in fighting the poverty and unemployment scourge.”

Speaking about the new app, Nicholas Ackay, CEO of Pesewa Link said with the country’s 35 percent internet penetration rate, bridging the gap between the users and the informal sector is key.

“We believe bringing the informal sector online is Africa’s unique opportunity to change the story of the economic stagnation and to tap into the world’s largest untapped data resources,” he said.

According to him, being online will be getting access to the hottest technological opportunity in the world currently.

The launch was on the theme, ‘From Africa’s first super crop to Africa’s first super app'.