By Godwill Arthur-Mensah, GNA
Accra, Oct. 13,
GNA – Hollard Ghana Holdings Limited, an insurance firm, has organised its
maiden Tertiary Entrepreneurship Summit at the University of Ghana Business
School, to empower students with basic entrepreneurial skills.
The event
exposed the participants to various entrepreneurial avenues they can take
advantage of whilst in school.
The
Entrepreneurship Summit, held on the theme: “Create and Secure a Better
Future,” is part of Hollard’s Larger Streetwise Financial Literacy programme,
aimed at inculcating entrepreneurial mind-set among students, to enable them to
take risk in starting a business after school, in order to earn multiple
streams of income and become financially-independent.
The event
brought together over 500 students from the various tertiary educational
institutions, who expressed some expectations, including how to start a
business, being resilient in business as well as how to manage and create a
profitable business venture.
Mr Daniel Boi
Addo, the Managing Director of Hollard Insurance, in his welcome address, said
Hollard believed in the entrepreneurial abilities of the Ghanaian youth and
would provide the necessary platform to nurture their entrepreneurial skills
towards becoming business owners in the near future.
He encouraged
the participants to scout for challenges within their communities and find
solutions through the development of various products and services to satisfy those
needs.
Mr Boi Addo
advised them to start their businesses on a smaller scale and nurture them to
become globally competitive brands by adopting strategic marketing tools.
Mr Iddrisu
Nashiru, a Business Development Strategist and Managing Director of Hollard
Life Assurance, who spoke on the topic: “Developing Entrepreneurship Mind-set”,
said an entrepreneur always finds solutions to societal problems and sees
opportunities in every life situation, adding that, every entrepreneur must be
creative, confident and have positive mind-set.
He underlined
the need for entrepreneurs to develop products and services that were of value
to their customers and should always seek customer feedback, in order to factor
them in product development.
Mr Nashiru
believed that research should be a critical component in every business
development because it helped one to understand his/her customers’ needs better
and developed suitable products and services to satisfy that pressing need.
There were some
young and established entrepreneurs who shared their success stories with the
participants and encouraged them to take risk in starting a business.
A mentorship
session was organised as part of the Entrepreneurship Summit, which enabled the
organisers to guide students on how to develop various business projects.
Some topics
treated at the summit included Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset, The Role
of an Entrepreneur, Creating Value for Your Customers, Connecting with the
Right People and Creating Multiple Income Streams.
Hollard Ghana
Holdings Limited is a subsidiary of Hollard International which manages the
international portfolio of the Hollard Groupcurrently operating in 18 countries
in Africa and Asia.
The thriving
insurance company has operations, partnerships and investments in South Africa,
Ghana, Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia, Australia, China, India and
Pakistan.
It envisioned
to aggressively grow its insurance businesses in Ghana and will do so by
creating dynamic, consumer-oriented insurance solutions that meet the needs of
all Ghanaians.
GNA
