Who can participate

In order to be eligible to participate in the Believe Begin Become Business Plan Competition a person must meet all of the following criteria as of 7th February, 2007:

a) Be a Ghanaian citizen
b) Be 20 years of age or older
c) Propose a new business that will be based in Ghana or an expansion on an existing business that is based in Ghana
d) If proposing an expansion on an existing business, the current business must have no more than 250 employees
e) Propose a business concept that will create no fewer than 10 new jobs by the end of the second year of business operations, and will have a minimum investment base of US$75,000 and annual sales of US$100,000 by the end of the second year of business operations.

The following rules about who can participate also apply:

f) Ideas can be submitted by individuals or by a group. If an idea is submitted by a group, all group members must meet all of the above stated criteria
g) Each idea may be submitted only once
h) Only one person per application may participate in training sessions, events, consultant meetings and any other aspect of the competition. The same person from any one business team must attend the entire programme from beginning to end. The only exceptions that may be made will be by consultants, who may agree in advance to meet with additional members of a management team
i) The organizers will offer a travel stipend as detailed in the table below for applicants who are invited to attend the entrepreneurship seminar (phase I) and again for the top 60 entrepreneurs who are invited to attend the core programme (phase II)

Region of residence	Round trip reimbursement rate to Accra
Northern	¢325,000
Upper West	¢275,000
Upper East	¢425,000
Brong Ahafo	¢225,000
Ashanti	¢125,000
Eastern	¢45,000
Volta	¢45,000
Central	¢25,000
Western	¢85,000
Greater Accra	---

j) The organizers are not responsible for any other costs (i.e. lodging, food, further transportation) that a participant may incur in order to attend any of the competition events

k) No employee of any of the organizations associated with the competition is permitted to participate (visit the ‘Programme Supporters’ tab on the website to see a list of Believe Begin Become supporting companies)