MEST Africa and the Mastercard Foundation’s venture acceleration program, MEST Scale, have selected twelve fast-growing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana to join in the inaugural cohort.
MEST Grow is a venture acceleration program that helps small businesses improve their operations, address major technological gaps, and improve their ability and capacity to grow.
Why They Were Chosen For MEST Scale Accelerator Programme
The participating SMEs were chosen for their commercial viability and great potential to develop their operations to provide job opportunities for young people across a variety of industries, including project and facility management, marketing, health care, and agriculture. For a year, the accelerator will provide these SMEs with tailored strategic, operational, and technical support, allowing them to generate impact and scale up successfully.
“SMEs are vital to Ghana’s economy.” Angela Duho, the Program Manager for MEST Scale, said that her goal is to help them become more efficient and to have a model that ensures quality in all aspects of product and service delivery wherever they work.
Selected SMEs For The MEST Scale Accelerator Programme
Accra Handyman: provides convenient facility booking as well as administration and maintenance services.
Agro Innova: is an AgriTech company that uses digital technologies to address issues confronting smallholder farmers and the agricultural value chain as a whole.
BTL Africa: is a marketing solutions firm that specializes in experiential, digital marketing, consumer engagement, and content generation.
Claron Health International:, through its telemedicine platform and traditional medical services, helps people get the health care they need in a way that is personalized, accessible, and affordable.
Darsfield Village Farms & Outgrowers (Darsfarm): Darsfarm uses technology to solve the poor level of productivity, processing, and distribution in agriculture in rural Ghana through their Darsfield EarthCare & Farm-Tech Foundation (Darsfoundation) project.
Green Gold Farms: is an agricultural business that uses large-scale farming to fight poverty, a lack of economic opportunities, malnutrition, and other problems in Northern Ghana.
Medpharma Alliance International Limited: is making health care more modern by offering e-consultations and e-prescriptions through specialists in the field.
mNotify: is a cloud-based omnichannel communications gateway that assists organizations in promoting, managing and scaling their digital consumer engagement activities.
The National Beekeepers Association: teaches small-scale farmers how to use sustainable farming methods and beekeeping practices to improve pollinator services and crop yields while also increasing their income.
Organic Trade and Investments (OTI): is a company that exports organic and natural ingredients from Africa to the rest of the world. They want to make these ingredients more available to people all over the world.
SnooCode: is an offline digital address system that allows anyone with a smartphone and the SnooCODE software to generate a memorable 6-or 7-digit alpha-numeric address code unique to their location.
XL Africa Group: is a multi-faceted outsourcing firm that offers services in human resources, project and facilities management, courier and delivery services, training and development, and construction.
More on MEST Scale Accelerator Programme
Unlike previous programs, the MEST Scale Accelerator is intended to assist SMEs in identifying the problems that impede their growth potential and limit their access to finance. MEST Africa will provide participating enterprises with hands-on and strategic coaching on how to manage their specific scale-related difficulties while establishing operational and technological efficiencies that increase their growth over the course of the year.
High-potential small businesses, a model of service delivery that is tailored to each customer, and Mastercard Foundation’s experience working with technology start-ups will help these small businesses grow, says Chirag Shamdasani, the Mastercard Foundation’s Ghana Program Lead, Innovation.
