By Staff Reporter
Rydberg Starck Limited has today given a 2 million Kwacha business grant to 10 Digital Malawi Project participants who successfully pitched their businesses during an entrepreneurship pitch day at Lotus by Serendib in Blantyre.
The 10 individuals are part of Digital Skills and Innovation Training Programme beneficiaries from Nsanje, Nchalo, Lunzu and Chiradzulu trained by Rydberg Starck Limited, one of the tech hubs training youths in digital skills across the country under the Digital Malawi Project
In his remarks, Project Manager for Digital Malawi Project, Chimwemwe Matemba applauded Rydberg Starck’s efforts of ensuring that young people have the opportunity to utilise digital skills to generate income and create employment opportunities.
“One of the challenges we are facing globally is the issue of youth employment and one of the ways to solve the problem is to use modern technologies such as the internet to ensure that we generate adequate income generating opportunities for our youth,” he ramarked, highlighting government’s will to ensuring that the youth in the country are capacitated and that they have the skills, the environments and opportunities to use ICT skills to generate income.
He disclosed that the project has two types of grants, grants from the Public Private Partnership Commission (PPPC) funded by the World Bank to the tech hubs, and subgrants which after the tech hubs access the grants they too disburse the funds to candidates such as the pitchers today under their programmes.
According to Cuthbert Magawa, Communications Officer for Rydberg Starck Limited, out of 219 participants of the programme, 16 top candidates were selected to pitch out of which 10 were successful.
He said Rydberg expects the successful pitchers to implement businesses that will benefit the youth and their communities. He also said that the candidates are expected to apply the digital skills acquired during the training to their businesses.
The ‘Luntha ndi Chuma’ Digital Skills Development and Innovation Training Programme is being implemented across the nation by the PPPC under Digital Malawi Project (DIGMAP) in collaboration with technical hubs (tech) hubs and it is funded by the World Bank.
