The forum attracted participants from Greater Banjul Area (GBA), Upper River and Lower River Regions.
The training was held under theme ‘guiding and nurturing startups businesses’ to apply and access the EU funded Tekkifi’ grants to enable growth and expansion ’
Adama Manneh, assistant grant officer at NACCUG said the project is for youths between the ages of 18 and 35 years recalling that the project started in 2017.
“The disbursement started in 2018 through the support of YEP under its ICT component. It was a three year project and later they added one year to it”.
The project, she added, started and with few regions but now it has been expanded to all the regions, recalling that in October 2019, GIZ came up with other partners and they now have a mini and solar grant.
Marie Madeline Mendy, regional coordinator of Young Entrepreneurs Network (YEN), said the network was founded earlier this year for youth to be championed and to be able to make it in the country.
She urged participants to be steadfast and committed to their course, reminding that they are not only participating as individual, but for their respective regions.
“It’s our responsibility to go back and implement so that each member will be stable to apply for the grant and become successful.”
Baboucarr Kebbeh, Chief Executive Officer of the Gambia Youths Chamber of Commerce, said the training was designed to enhance the capacity of youth entrepreneurs in Greater Banjul Area, Lower River and Upper River Regions.
“We are able to gather 30 young entrepreneurs, who have never benefitted from this grant and they are all into businesses. But they face a lot of challenges in filling the ‘Tekiffi’ grant so we mobilize them as network and then trained them on access to finance.”
The training, he added, will focus more on practicals and therefore urged participants to be steadfast and make the best use of the project.
