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Small And Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) is putting up four major programmes in efforts to grow the sector into global competitiveness.
A first is to commission five Common Facility Centres for garment making, furniture making, autotech and packaging.
The centres are meant to bring together workers involved in similar sectors to share facilities at subsidized costs.
According to SMEDAN Director-General and chief executive officer Dr.Olawale Fasanya, the centres remove the burden of processing machines, workspace, skilled manpower and electricity, which account for very high operating costs for MSMEs.
He announced the efforts at a press conference to mark the UN World MSME Day in Abuja.
Pilots of the centres are in Abuja, Lagos, Kaduna, Nnewi and Katsina.
“The Agency is seeking partnerships with both the public and private sectors to provide the needed enabling environment for our 39.6 million MSMEs to become globally competitive,” said Fasanya.
An ongoing partnership with commercial banks targets Sterling Bank, First Bank and Jaiz Bank as well as the Nigerian Incentive Risk-Based Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL).
The partnership is implement measures to reduce the bottlenecks associated with accessing funding windows that is critical to business growth.
“The partnership seeks to deepen the reach of the Agency’s Matching Fund initiative,” explained Fasanya.
An initiative to establish a microfinance bank has been concluded. The bank is to attend to the peculiar funding demands of “nano and micro entrepreneurs” that account for more than 90% of MSMEs in Nigeria.
“These huge number of practicing MSMEs are largely informal requiring tailored services that can transit them from their informal status to becoming formal and structured,” said Fasanya.
“We are also deepening our interventions and supports towards the sustainable development of MSMEs across the States.
“I am glad to report that more than 250,000 direct and indirect beneficiaries have been impacted through some of our flagship programs such as the One-Local-Government-One-Product, Conditional Grant Scheme and National Business Skills Development Initiative.
“The latest Annual Impact Assessment report showed that more than 46% of beneficiaries of the Agency’s programs have been able to generate extra employments, had access to more funding opportunities and have shown verifiable evidence of increased turnover and markets.
The agency has secured key details of more than 3 million MSMEs in its MSME mass registration database. It will continue to update the database and ensure up to 50% of the total MSMEs in Nigeria are fully captured by the end of 2023 in conformity with the Data Compliance Standards.
“Other programs of the Agency that have made significant contributions to the inclusive development of the MSME sector include the Accreditation of the Business Development Service Providers, MSMEs Export Facilitation program in partnership with NEPC and Business Development Service Providers.
“All these interventions have increased the capacities of various categories of MSMEs by more than 30% within the first two years of benefitting from the programme.
Why the interest in MSMEs?
The United Nations recgonises the significant role that MSMEs play globally to national socio-economic wellbeing, so much so it declared June 27 the World MSME Day.
MSME community have helped in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) objectives by being responsible for up to 90% of businesses, 60% to 70% of employments and contributing up to half of the global GDP.
Specifically in Nigeria, MSMEs contribute over 59 million jobs as at 2021 (over 84% of the total labour force in Nigeria) and more than 48% to the country’s nominal GDP, according to a report by SMEDAN and the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021.
Programmes to grow MSMEs
The Talent Hunt, with special focus on identifying special skills and converting talents into enterprise lines.
“We are very aware of the creative minds of Nigeria’s young populace that account for about 68% of our population,” said Fasanya.
“We have over the years been able to nudge creative entrepreneurs in the areas of ICT, Fashion, Movie production and metal fabrication.”
Each participant gets their capacities built in enterprise management and intellectual property laws while the first 3 winners in each states gets varying degrees of grants.
The agency is levering on key and active business membership organisations to build their capacities and support them in achieving their objectives.
Several BMOs cut across sectors, gender and regions—and provide advocacy channel for members.
SMEDAN has over time supported over 200 BMOs with tailored capacity building, funds and linkages to several interventions of Government.
SMEDAN has charge for 23 industrial development centres, but is repurposing them into Common Facility Centres, workspace, innovation hubs and cluster parks.
“The IDCs provide an unexploited opportunity for addressing the key challenges that have over time limited the development of the MSME sub-sector,” said Fasanya.
“The Agency is willing and ready to enter into partnership to repurpose some of the IDCs.”
Opportunity Fairs and International Fairs is the agency’s route to open more competitive local and global markets.
Nigeria’s MSMEs contribute only 6.2% of its export.
The fairs are a means to strategically dominate huge market opportunities that exist within the West African corridors while also connecting to the AfCFTA initiative,” said Fasanya.
“I can clearly report that more than 160 MSMEs have benefitted from the Agency’s sponsored trade fair visits to the Gambia, Uganda and other West African nations.
“Also, more than 120 MSMEs have benefitted from the Agency facilitated trade visits to China and other emerging economies in Asia.
Mindshift and Tertiary Institutions Entrepreneurship Development Programs aims to create young entrepreneurs right from school, both secondary and tertiary.
It aims to address high unemployment rate in Nigeria, put at 41%.
More than 5,000 teachers have participated in the Training of Trainers organized across the country.
Women In Self Employment program (WISEP) focuses on reducing the drudgery associated with agribusiness. SMEDAN run the programme in line with the global efforts to ensure gender balance and to maximize the entrepreneurship abilities of the female gender.
The program is essentially delivered through Cooperatives.
Said Fasanya: “There are several other programs and initiatives of the Agency put in place not just to generate income for the owners but also to make significant contributions to our national GDP, create employments, reduce social vices and reduce poverty. Some of these other programs include Agribusiness Development and Empowerment Program, Products and Marketing Enhancement Schemes, Textile and Garment Supports.”
There is need for emerging economies such as Nigeria to attach importance to the wholesome development of the most important sector of the economy.
“The resources required to achieve this feat I believe is largely available,” said Fasanya.
“In line with the theme of this year’s celebration, ‘Building a Stronger Future Together’, now is the best time for every stakeholder within the MSME space to be deliberate in helping to create the much-needed enabling environment to allow our MSMEs to be more competitive.
