A two-day training workshop to build entrepreneurship capacity of women and people with disabilities has been held in Accra.
Organised by Heritors Labs Limited, a Web 3.0 company was on the theme: “Levelling Up Training Workshop for Research and Innovation Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship.”
The training aimed to equip participants with the skills and knowledge on how to commercialise their innovative ideas and prototypes.
A release issued by the company said the workshop forms part of efforts to drive the development of thriving value chains in the Science, Technology, Innovation and Research (STIR) ecosystem as well as advance the commercialisation of innovation and research outcomes in Ghana.
It said participants were introduced to the available support programmes within the research and innovation ecosystem and educated on the principles and practise of commercialising research and innovation.
Other topics treated at the training workshop included financial management, funding support, research sales and marketing strategies, team building, and company structure and formation.
Innovation
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Heritors Labs Ltd., Derrydean Dadzie, explained that individuals with disabilities and women were often overlooked and underrepresented in the STIR value chain despite the critical roles they play using their other physical and intellectual abilities to impact the ecosystem significantly.
He said people with disabilities might be unable to work as lab technicians or use delicate scientific tools and equipment such as microscopes or simple ones like beakers.
However, they may be capable of achieving success in fields like project management, research communications, software development, and technology advisory within the research and innovation ecosystem.
The levelling up training initiative aimed to build the innovation capacity of people with other abilities and women on how to commercialise their research and innovation ideas, thus empowering them to create their businesses to achieve financial independence towards eradicating poverty.
“We are excited about the impact this programme will have on the lives of its participants and anticipate new partnerships in addressing other pressing challenges to bring the social gaps in the research and innovation commercialisation value chain,” Dadzie said.
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The training was funded and supported by the Research and Innovation Systems for Africa (RISA) fund, FCDO and UKAID in collaboration with the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, which contributed significantly to developing the content and coordinating the resource persons for the various topics.