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Kampala, Uganda | Julius Businge | A total of 30 small and medium enterprises are going to benefit from Absa Bank Uganda mentorship programme that will handle matters entrepreneurship and finance.
The beneficiaries will be picked from 100 small and medium-sized enterprises that are set to benefit from a Business Continuity and Survival Training and Coaching programme, GIZ E4D programme funded by the German and Norwegian governments.
The programme, which was launched on March 11, aims at helping businesses to recover from the COVID-19 crisis.
The 30 beneficiaries will also stand a chance to access finance to fund their plans.
The training for the general 100 businesses, will be done online, and will be conducted by ACLAIM Africa Limited experts.
Alfred Agaba, the managing director for ACLAIM, urged applicants to concentrate on the courses to be able to stand a chance of benefiting from the Absa offer.
The topics to be handled include; how to build financial management systems; financing a business; cost management; customer acquisition and general management of people/staff and more.
It is targeting players in construction, manufacturing, tourism and hospitality sectors and will be a blend of short live webinars conducted twice a month and a series of online courses available to the SMEs.
The trainings will run from March to June 2021 while the one-on-one coaching sessions for the promising SMEs will commence in May 2021 ending in July 2021.
Albert Byaruhanga, the Absa Bank Uganda’s head of business banking said, the bank will work with GIZ to bring forward pragmatic resilience-based solutions to the challenges facing these businesses.
James Macbeth Forbes, the country director for GIZ said, the private sector is critical to the economic development of Uganda, and that a large component of this growth will be driven by having a highly skilled and highly competent SME core.
The Uganda Business Climate Index 2020 conducted by the Economic Policy Research Center headquartered at Makerere University found that lockdown measures had reduced business activity by more than half.
The report adds that 90% of businesses surveyed reported experiencing an increase in operating expenses due to COVID-19 containment measures decreed by the government. Furthermore, 75% of the surveyed businesses had laid off employees following the risk presented by the pandemic.
The initiative is being implemented in partnership with Absa Bank Uganda, Uganda Tourism Association, Uganda National Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors, Federation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Uganda and Uganda Manufacturers Association.
