Lorine Emenike
Over 1500 women in Rivers state have benefitted from the free IMPACT HER training for the African female entrepreneur to build scalable businesses and be investors’ ready to compete in the global market.
The organizer of the training in partnership with Ministry of Women Affairs MS EFE UKALA said she has done over three hundred-million-Naira investment to Africa and over a billion dollars investment generally.
Efe who is the Assistant General Counsel of JP Morgan Chases said ‘’I have been going around seeking investment from companies to Africa and I know a lot of men handling this investment but not enough women, even the women who dare participate are not able to pass through the committees to been approved’’.
Efe who is an experienced investment/private equity lawyer informed newsmen that her practice in Institutional investment in private and public acquisitions arising out of Africa where she looked into investment of women from Nairobi, Ghana, Madagascar and Nigeria and sat on committees meetings to advise on structuring cross border private equity transactions negotiated transactions, and drafted agreement on divers deals ranging from consumers goods to financial services especially Compliance and Foreign Corrupt practices act Matters revealed that there’s a three hundred million dollars gap for female entrepreneurs funds worldwide.
According to her, African alone was about forty two billion gap that needed to be filled so I started Impact Her to fill that gap to help connect the African women, first of all, to equip and prepare her to be able to have a company that an investor would be interested in and connect her to the investor and the bigger market.
Mrs Adotemi Estotetito, the permanent secretary Ministry of Women Affairs, said the ministry decided to partner with Ms Efe Ukala who went out there to study and saw how Women are being denied opportunities of funding to scale up their businesses and formed a foundation to help women to develop this entrepreneur’s skills that would enable their businesses grow to the level where they can compete with men and to the levels that can sell internationally.
She hoped that Rivers women would tap into her idea that would enable them scale up their business.
She expressed delight in the turnout of women for the program.
She said: “Our initial plan was 500 women but we have exceeded over 1500 women. That means women are itching to learn how to scale up their businesses that would impact positively to the financial status by way of helping to sustain the family.
She advised Rivers women to utilize the Training opportunity and not store it in the box but to ensure that they put into practice benefit of the training to growing and sustaining their businesses and their families.
