entrepreneurs, leading retail bank in Nigeria, Access Bank Plc has unveiled the second
edition of its Womenpreneur Pitch-a-ton programme.
The Womenpreneur Pitch–a–ton Africa 2020 Campaign is designed to provide female owned
businesses across Africa an opportunity to access to finance and world–class business
trainings as well as mentoring opportunities. This programme has been designed to create
an enabling environment for female entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.
Speaking at the launch of the second edition of this initiative, Ayona Trimnell, Group
Head W Initiative, said, “Access Bank has been a leading advocate for women’s
economic empowerment in Nigeria and this is the key motivation for the ‘W’ Initiative
which caters to the women economy particularly in the areas of capacity building and
creating networking opportunities for women”. She further stated that the Pitch-a-ton is
an expansion of the Womenpreneur Business Workshop, under the Bank’s women
proposition, the W Initiative. “We launched the Pitch-a-ton initiative last year in line with
our value proposition as the No. 1 Bank of Choice for women in Nigeria, and we got a
tremendous amount of applications with innovative business ideas. This year we want
to do more and we want to reach out to more female entrepreneurs not just in Nigeria
but across Africa. “As a responsible financial institution with huge presence in other
African countries, we want to give the same opportunity to other female entrepreneurs
in Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia as well as Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Gambia, &
Congo to apply and participate in this year’s edition of the programme.
The Womenpreneur Pitch-a-ton Africa 2020 will provide up to N9 million financial grant
and a unique capacity building program aimed at empowering women entrepreneurs.
The programme is designed as a 3-month period incorporating pitching sessions and 8
weeks of mini-MBA training in collaboration with the IFC. Interested persons from
Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and Rwanda as well as with extension to Sierra Leone,
Mozambique, Gambia, & Congo who meet the criteria are required to fill an online
application. The five hundred candidates selected from this pool will then send in a sixty
seconds video pitch which will be screened by a credible panel of business experts to
select fifty finalists.
As part of the graduation requirements, the fifty finalists will pitch their businesses,
infusing learnings from the mini-MBA and will stand an opportunity to win financial
grants up to N5 million.
As a leading commercial bank in Nigeria, Access Bank has made significant
investments aimed at enhancing growth in the Small and Medium-size;Enterprise
sector. The Bank is also a major advocate for women in business through innovative
offerings like the W Power Loan, a discounted financing at 15% interest per annum, for
women to grow their business as well as other Business Support Services.
