Access Bank has announced the expansion of its Womenpreneur Pitch-A-Ton programme to six African countries.

The programme, which was launched in 2019, is targeted at women above the age of 18 years who have been in business for at least one year.

In its first year, it was only open to Nigerians and has now been extended to Ghana, Rwanda, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Congo.

The programme, which would last for three months, is designed as a virtual programme with pitching sessions and an eight-week mini-MBA training in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.

Ayona Trimnell, W Initiative group head at the bank, said the Pitch-a-ton is an expansion of the Womenpreneur Business Workshop, under the Bank’s women proposition, the W Initiative.

“We launched the Pitch-a-ton initiative last year in line with our value proposition as the bank of choice for women in Nigeria, and we got a tremendous amount of applications with innovative business ideas,” she said.

“This year we want to do more and we want to reach out to more female entrepreneurs not just in Nigeria but across Africa.

“As a responsible financial institution with huge presence in other African countries, we want to give the same opportunity to other female entrepreneurs to apply and participate in this year’s edition of the programme.”

The bank said 500 candidates would be selected from the initial pool of applicants. The selected candidates would then send in a one-minute video pitch which will be screened by a panel to select 50 finalists.

As part of the graduation requirements, the fifty finalists will pitch their businesses, infusing learnings from the mini-MBA and will stand an opportunity to win financial grants up to N5 million.