Assessing the Role of Training in Growing Women Small Business Holdings in Dansoman Market of Ghana

Abstract

The study examined how training and development packages can be extended to women small scale businesses of Ghana especially Dansoman Market in the Metropolitan Accra Region. The study was motivated by the fact that a good number of small women business owners who are single mothers or bread winners, often lose their profit and capital through reckless expenditure pattern such as employing them to acquire parcels of land, flashy vehicles which can all be obtained with long term credits rather than damage their liquidity positions. In conducting the qualitative study, stratified random sampling technique was adopted to select traders in various product segments within the Dansoman market. Purposive sampling technique assisted the study in soliciting information from financial institutions in the area which transact financial businesses with a good number of these traders. It came out unequivocally from the study that most of the women traders have no training whatsoever in financial, marketing nor human resource management and that they are virtually practicing what they see others do and pick up from friends. The study therefore recommended that stakeholders especially government agencies like Ministry of Trade and Industry, Women and Children Affairs, National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) as well as Ghana Association of Bankers collaborate and evolve a suitable kind of training packages for these women traders thereby enhancing their managerial competence towards sustaining a mutually beneficial business relationship.