The Afigya-Kwabre District Business Advisory Centre (BAC) of the National Board for Small Scale Industries, has intensified its efforts at fighting rural poverty through employable skills training.

This is being done in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development co-funded Rural Enterprises Project.

Opening one of such training programmes at Ntiribuoho, Madam Marina Kusi, the District Head of the BAC, said the move would improve the socio-economic conditions of the people.

The goal is not only to equip more people with skills to create jobs for themselves and others, but aid them to adopt best practices to sustain their business operations.

Thirty-five unemployed women and men are attending the two-week training on soya-bean processing – soya products including milk, oil, snacks, “weanimix” and bread.

Madam Kusi said the BAC is eager to grow small-scale and medium enterprises to create wealth and boost the economies of the rural communities.

She pointed out that by so doing, the drift to the urban centres by the rural youth in search for non-existing jobs would significantly slow down.

She encouraged the people to take advantage of the training programmes to raise their household incomes to make their lives better.

Mr Tweneboa Kodua, Lecturer at the College of Tropical Agriculture in Kumasi, underlined the need for those trained to be supported with credit to start their businesses.

He said it would not be enough to provide people with employable skills but to make sure that they had the basic tools and seed capital to practice what they had been taught.