The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a $1million grant to boost local content and development of small and medium-size enterprise (SME) initiatives in Mozambique.

The grant, from the Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Multi-Donor Trust Fund (YEIMDTF), will provide technical and institutional assistance to the Instituto para a Promoção das Pequenas e Médias Empresas, or IPEME, for the direct support of startups and SMEs.

According to the bank, the Mozambique YWEB Startup Project with the IPEME will be a multisector local content initiative focusing on tourism, manufacturing, agriculture, ICT, health, and transport.

‘IPEME’, which in English stands for The Institute for the Promotion of Small and Medium Enterprises, is a public entity under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The project aims to facilitate supply links between such initiatives and large companies, including government entities and non-governmental organisations (NGO’s).

The AfDB Vice President in charge of Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation, Solomon Quaynor, said the project would improve job creation, linkages between local SMEs, and youth and women empowerment.

‘They are in line with the bank’s core objective of supporting private sector development in Africa, including through the promotion of local entrepreneurship, the development of value chains and support to MSMEs that represent the bulk of the African economic fabric’, the bank quoted him as saying.

The project, it was gathered, will also support more than 150 local companies by facilitating access to skills and certification, contracts with large firms and finance from local financial institutions.

‘These partnerships demonstrate a strong commitment from the Mozambique government to support local business, communities and create jobs, particularly in the north of the country’, Country Director Pietro Toigo said.

Source: AfDB

Photo source: Meaduva