Sparkassenstiftung für Internationale Kooperation (Savings Bank Foundation for International Cooperation), has organized a two-day Executive Symposium to build the capacity of Cooperative credit unions and microfinance institutions and to expose them to the salient requirements of the regulator.
In collaboration with the Ghana Microfinance Institutions Network (GHAMFIN) and the Credit Union Association (CUA), the event was also targeted at training board members and managers of such institutions through demand-driven, affordable and attractive training courses.
Speaking at the two-day programme, Bianca Jänecke, Senior Consultant for the Training Project Ghana said that program achieved its set target of building the capacities of stakeholders in the microfinance sector as well as the vocation education sector.
She expressed gratitude to the partners of the program for making it a success and revealed that her outfit will in the coming year roll out a teaching program.
“We have held a two-day symposium with our two main partners. The main focus of this is a capacity building for the finance sector. So, we are working in two parallel work groups working in different fields. We are working on common facility centres for each of the trainees. We are working on dualized vocational education and training for the financial sector. We are also working on e-learning.
For her part, Deputy Minister of Education, Gifty Twum Ampofo, has disclosed government’s plans to improve the quality of vocational and technical education in the country by refurbishing the thirty-four (34) National Vocational Training Institutes (NVTIs) nationwide.
Madam Barbara Ayisi Asher further revealed that loans are being secured by government to renovate the training facilities in the NVTIs all over the nation. This move, she asserted, would add value to the country’s vocational and technical resources.
“We have secured loans [that], starting from next month, contractors are going to be on all the 34 NVTIs to ensure that their existing facilities are refurbished”, she said. She added that, “buildings, equipment, workshops and training of instructors as well as vehicles [have been acquired] to ensure that things are done and NTVI becomes lucrative”.
Earlier, Yaw Gyamfi, Executive Director of Ghana Microfinance Institutions Network stated that “for 200 hundred years, no savings company in Germany had failed before, so we were wondering why it was so while ours kept struggling. It was on interrogation that we realized they were using what was called dual education. This system did more of apprenticeship or more of practical work with little theory.”
He added that when the platform is launched, all the required learning material which will be uploaded will be of a high international standard tailored specifically to suit the needs of Ghanaians.
“Our game plan is that the industry is quite big, the non-banks and microfinance groups form the biggest informal sector in Ghana and we control over 8 million clients and that is not a small thing to joke with, and with that base, we have a strong case to make everybody buy in to it,” Mr. Gyamfi informed.
He added “What we are doing is to complement what national banking college and others were doing, and we believe that it would be a very useful complementary platform rather than just coming in to compete with the existing structure. In that sense we would be more relevant to work within the space.”
