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Micro
& Small Business Support Development Program
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Support
to Entrepreneurs
Business
Support
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"..
Providing necessary support to the massive numbers
of grassroots financially handicapped
entrepreneurs and farmers by providing
coaching, mentoring, product & market
development and micro financing, to help
them grow their small businesses
and create jobs for the masses" |
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In
business support, we provide all the necessary
assistance required by a micro-enterprise to grow
and stand on it's own. This includes but not
limited to business planning, market
identification & development, product
manufacturing/packaging & promotion,
assistance in local & export sales, services
development, agribusiness development, finding the
right tools, equipment /machinery, finding the
right staff and partners, finding the money
required to grow the business, etc.
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COACHING & SKILLS
DEVELOPMENT
Our coaching
service includes
- modern business
management
- training
in specific technical skills
- financial
services & management
- market research
- products &
services development
- global markets
& competition
- staffing
- Growing the
business
- use of efficient
tools
- modern
designing/planning
- manufacturing
for target markets
- packaging,
labeling , branding
- export &
markets readiness
- quality
maintenance/control
- documentation
& technical writing
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MENTORING
One of the key
services we provide is a mentorship program which
cultivates a developmental relationship between a
more experienced small business entrepreneurs and
a less experienced business person. The
relationship that develops, results in essential
skills transfer which enables the new entrepreneur
to quickly grow into his or her venture.
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PRODUCT
& MARKET DEVELOPMENT
ICAfrica has a team of
experienced volunteers with backgrounds in
industrial, manufacturing and low technology
products development. The team comprises
engineers, advertisers, global marketers,
financial analysts and consumer advocates. We also
have experts in products and services development
on staff.
Our work in this
section includes doing all that is necessary to
help small & micro entrepreneurs in the
manufacturing or services sectors to produce best
quality products and or offer best quality
services to both the local export markets.
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MICRO-FINANCE
It was clear to us
right from the start of our work in Africa, that
one of the most important thing to do was to find
an efficient method of making micro loans available to
struggling impoverished enterprising men, women and
the youth that require a bit of a boost
in the form of small cash injection.
In most of the communities, many of these people,
especially women do not qualify
for any kinds of loan due to several reasons. Our micro finance program is changing all that.
Women & men with bright ideas and no money can
come to us for seed money.
So
far, we have offered micro-loans of between $50 to
$3500 to over 450 micro-entrepreneurs. The loans
help the ventures to grow rapidly,
improve the quality
of lives of recipients and their families, and
permanently transform the benefiting local
communities.
Applying
for Micro-Loan
We prefer micro-loan requests to come from a
membership based organizations, trades groups,
age-grades, "Isusu" Teams, etc. The
request should stipulate how many members of the group
would need loans, how much each person is seeking,
what type venture the member is pursuing, and how
the members intend to use her/his loans. Please
have the leader of your group write to:
Micro-loan
administrator
ICAfrica - International Charity for Africa
C3 Centre, 1155 Lola Street, suite 201,
Ottawa, ON K1K 4Y3
Canada
email: admin@icafrica.com
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JOB
CREATION INCENTIVE
The
principal ideas behind our Entrepreneur Assistance for Jobs
Creation program (EAJC)
is to encourage entrepreneurs to create as many new jobs
as possible, especially in the highest unemployment
communities in Africa. We
provide this encouragement through the incentives
that we have described above -
Business coaching, Mentoring, Products & Services development,
Micro Finance and Job Creation
incentives.
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