Access Bank excites womenpreneurs with Pitch-a-ton Africa

As part of its promise to continuously provide financial and business skills to female entrepreneurs, Nigeria’s retail bank, Access Bank Plc, has unveiled the second edition of its womenpreneur programme.

The Womenpreneur Pitch-a-ton Africa 2020 Campaign is designed to provide female-owned businesses across Africa the opportunity to access to finance and world-class business trainings as well as mentoring opportunities.

Speaking at the launch of the second edition of this initiative, Group Head W Initiative, Ayona Trimnell, said, “Access Bank has been a leading advocate for women’s economic empowerment in Nigeria and this is the key motivation for the ‘W’ Initiative, which caters for the women economy, particularly in the areas of capacity building and creating networking opportunities for women.”

She added that the programme was an expansion of the Womenpreneur Business Workshop, under the bank’s women proposition, the W Initiative.

Her words, “We launched the pitch-a-ton initiative last year in line with our value proposition as the number one bank of choice for women in Nigeria, and we got a tremendous amount of applications with innovative business ideas.

“This year, we want to do more and we want to reach out to more female entrepreneurs not just in Nigeria but across Africa. As a responsible financial institution with huge presence in other African countries, we want to give the same opportunity to other female entrepreneurs in Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia as well as Sierra Leone, Mozambique, The Gambia and Congo to apply and participate in this year’s edition of the programme.”

Financial Street gathered that the programme would provide up to N9m financial grant and a unique capacity building programme aimed at empowering women entrepreneurs. It is designed as a three-month period incorporating pitching session and eight weeks of mini-MBA training in collaboration with the IFC.

Interested persons from Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and Rwanda as well as with extension to Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Gambia and Congo, who meet the criteria, are required to fill an online application. The 500 candidates selected from this pool will send in a 60 seconds video pitch, which will be screened by a credible panel of business experts to select 50 finalists.

As part of the graduation requirements, the finalists will pitch their businesses, infusing learning from the mini-MBA and will stand the opportunity to win financial grants up to N5m.

Get in Touch

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Related Articles