KAMPALA: The Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and Grooming a Successful Woman with Intellectual Mind (GSWIM) have organized a series of national workshops for women entrepreneurs in order to assist female-led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in protecting their innovations through trademarking. Today, the three partners presented trademark certificates to a group of more than 20 entrepreneurs who had attended a two-day training on ‘Intellectual Property for Branding & Product Development- Trademarks Launching, Sharing Experiences and Lessons Learned.’
The training aimed to provide participants with the skills and information they needed to turn their company ideas into tangible strategies, as well as register and trademark their firms. Participants also got individual counseling on branding, product development, and market positioning for their firms.
During the event, Duong Chi Dung, Director of WIPO’s Division for Least Developed Countries, challenged the women entrepreneurs to position their enterprises to capitalize on possibilities given by worldwide demand for quality items from protected entities. He reaffirmed WIPO’s commitment to assisting in the training of more aspiring female entrepreneurs. ‘WIPO will help female-led enterprises leverage intellectual property to become more inventive, as well as to increase their productive capacity and competitiveness.’ ‘We want to hold more of these trainings to assist skill development,’ Duong Chi remarked.
Caroline Matovu, a Ugandan entrepreneur and alumni of a previous capacity building WIPO project, was particularly recognized for creating a new detergent brand in her backyard to help in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Head, Chattels Registry at URSB, Stellah Kakwezi Olimi who represented the Registrar General, thanked the partners for looking out for women entrepreneurs who contribute a sizeable percentage to the national economic activity. ’URSB has a strategic vision to support the identification, registration, nurturing, protection and commercialization of women-led business. In March 2021, in partnership with the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Association Limited (UWEAL), we launched the Women in Business (WiB) Club to enhance competitiveness of female owned entities. The 2019 MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE) ranks Uganda first in Africa at 38.2% of total business owners. The Trademark certificates we are handing over to women entrepreneurs is proof of the ingenuity of women to start and protect their innovations. We thank you for being the shining stars of entrepreneurship. She said.
On his part, James Wasula, the Chairman of GSWIM said the workshop was organized to celebrate mentorship and the accompanying success stories gained by women entrepreneurs. “My advice to women entrepreneurs is to look out for niche areas that can be exploited. If any idea crosses your mind, take a moment and scribble it down. When you settle down, just think of how that idea can be further developed into a product or a service. The mentorship you received in these workshops is meant to offer you the skills to make money out of your ideas while growing your businesses’ Wasula said
The training offered participants the opportunity to exchange experiences and promote their products, discuss the benefits of intellectual property for entrepreneurs, how to build brands for enhanced market value, development and use of IP strategies, trademark and industrial design registration process among others.
The workshop targeted women entrepreneurs involved in sectors such as fashion and design, detergents, confectionery products, hand crafts, bottled beverages, cleaning services and beauty care products from across the country. Others were representatives of businesswomen associations, representatives of the Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association Limited (UWEAL) and the Uganda Small Scale Industries Association (USSIA)