The Social Development Fund (SDF) on Tuesday, launched the US$8M Entrepreneurship Promotion & Micro-finance Development Project (EPMDP) in Janjangbureh, Central River Region (CRR).

The EPMDP is a-five-year project and it is a grant   from the African Development Bank (ADB) earmarked for the government of The Gambia. The aim of the project is to contribute to poverty reduction in a sustainable manner with country wide coverage. In his launching statement, Alhaji Ganyie Touray, the governor of CRR, said that the launching of the Project  is a clear manifestation of government's commitment towards poverty reduction. He pointed out that, the government's Vision 2020 lays emphasis on participatory governance and balanced development to contribute to poverty alleviation.

Governor Touray stated that, the government's  fiscal policy puts poverty reduction a central theme in government's development agenda. Commenting on some of the constraints faced by the rural people in The Gambia, Governor Touray highlighted the dependence on a single economic activity, lack of skills to diversify sources of income to supplement household livelihoods, insufficient access to financial and technical resources to engage in other productive activities and lack of market opportunities for diversified products and services as key factors responsible.

Lamin Camara, a representative of the Ministry of Finance stated that  with a proper implementation of the project, small and medium enterprises could enhance their entrepreneurial skills and also access credit facilities to raise capital for their businesses. According to him, no meaningful development can be attained without empowering those in the informal sector with capital and capacity, given that, the sector composed of big components of the country's labour force.

Sonko Fofana,  manager of SDF, said that, the aim and objective of the project is to contribute to poverty reduction in a sustainable manner and to support the diversification of rural income generation .He disclosed that the project will support the training of rural women, men and youths in entrepreneurship and skills training to become economically empowered and contribute to their household poverty reduction.