National Enterprise Development Initiative (NEDI) has recently commenced a five-day training of 20 young people, including back-way returnees on business plan development at the Rural Development Institute (RDI) in Mansakonko, Lower River Region.
The training, which is funded by the government of the Gambia through the Ministry of Youth and Sports, is meant to empower the participants with skills to develop bankable business plans that will enable them attract funding from agricultural projects and other projects.
The training is also aimed at scaling up youth involvement and participation in the agricultural value chain through the relevant projects under the ministry of agriculture and Youth Empowerment Project mini grant as in line with the inter-ministerial partnership between the youth and sports ministry and the agricultural ministry.
This, according to the organisers came after they realized that the young entrepreneurs in the country lack the capacity to produce standard or bankable business proposals to attract funding for their various businesses from donors and projects.
NEDI program manager, Mustapha Badjie said the training will help the participants to link them to jobs “this is because we discovered that there is a gap in our delivery service to ensure effective and sustainable creation of youth enterprises within the country.”
“We will do monitoring and evolution to know the impact and challenges face by these beneficiaries during the implementation of their various enterprises,” he said.
Meanwhile, lead trainer, Ousman Sonko said they subscribe to the value of youth empowerment process and progressive capacity building of young people to be able to overcome their everyday challenges.
“In reality if you build your capacity you’re expected to overcome lot of challenges, either as individual or as an actor in the society,” he said.
He added that there are lots of gains that have been registered since the training started in 2015. “Most of you are entrepreneurs, but some of you are also service providers you are expected to acquire lot of skills here to be able to develop your independent plans.”
