Women’s Innovation for Sustainable Enterprises (WISE)

This project aims to address the multi-faceted barriers that Ghanaian women entrepreneurs face at almost every stage of their business operations. This project is part of the Innovation for Women’s Economic Empowerment in Ghana Call for Preliminary Proposals. This project will establish women-friendly business hubs (HerHubs) in five rural and peri-urban districts in the Brong-Ahafo and Northern Regions to address these barriers including three Rural Solar HerHubs in remote communities. The HerHubs serve as a “one-stop-shop” for women to access gender-responsive services to start and grow small enterprises especially in the soybean and green sectors. This project facilitates the feminization of these products and services to meet women entrepreneurs’ specific needs including linkages between service providers and stakeholders where some services already exist. This project directly benefits more than 12 600 women between the ages of 19 and 55 by introducing them to HerHub products and services. Among them 4 000 expect to receive direct training including 3 230 in agri-business and 810 in green skills

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) Improved women’s agency to exercise decisions regarding their participation in economic growth (2) Increased productivity profitability and innovation of women-owned businesses.