By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – THE All Africa Association for Small and Medium Enterprises, AAASMEs, yesterday, called on the African Union, AU, to set a uniform standard for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, SMEs, in the agricultural sector.

Speaking with Vanguard, the President, AAASMEs, Dr Ebiekure Jasper Eradiri, said the uniform standard for SMEs in Africa is very important to ensure the small businesses develop faster and to allow seamless trading in the continent and outside the African shores in order to take out the challenge of rejections in the international market, and that would enable the African SMEs to compete keenly with their peers.

Eradiri also expressed concern over the level of development over Nigeria’s agricultural sector despite the huge number of SMEs in the sector, saying they ought to have developed beyond the level they are.

He said: “Well, it is quite sad that we’re having a level of development over agriculture and all the shenanigans going on around it.Nigeria is blessed, and Nigeria’s agro sector is blessed. So all those that are in the agro-allied businesses, all the SMEs in that space, are supposed to prosper, blossom and flourish.

“Unfortunately, we have stoppers, and stoppers could be turned to enablers.Issues mitigating against the success of that space range from legislative issues, barriers for regulatory issues, and so frameworks that can assist products, logistics, and then customs.

“If you go to the borders, you would not be happy with what happens there. So in an era of AFCFTA, we believe that goods and people should be able to move freely.

“We believe that agro-products should be able to move freely. We believe too there must be standards, and so for Nigeria to benefit successfully from moving the agro-products across the borders and across the world, in the levels of trade, we must have standards.

“And so we encourage the Standards Organization of Nigeria, SON, the Africa Standards Organization, ASO, to be able to work together and come up with a unified standard, so that the African standard will be good enough for Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya or Rwanda.

“So basically, what we are trying to say is that there must be a uniform standard, and the African Union is encouraged to see that frameworks for that are put together but one thing is to put a framework, and the next thing is for implementation.

Therefore, he called on “governments across all levels, the continent, 55 States across the continent, must be able to domesticate whatever the African Union has put together as a framework, and I think that should help for implementation, and looking at SMEs that are in the agro-sector and SMEs that are able to create jobs, SMEs that are able to generate the Gross State Product, GSP or the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, of a country, should be supported and encouraged.”

However , he commended the Nigerian government in giving grants to SMEs.

“In Nigeria, we are happy to learn that the federal government of Nigeria has brought about some levels of grants and supports for SMEs to thrive. This is an area that we applaud the federal government of Nigeria because SMEs should thrive and not strive.So once you support them, it means that they are not striving.

“And then we believe that this will bring about immense job creation, this will bring about economic boosts for a country, and then we believe that the SMEs are the largest engine for economic growth. So they will be able to employ.And once SMEs employ, it means that you are reducing security.

“So it’s about using SMEs to silence insecurity, which is possible, which is doable, and so we want to applaud the government.I’m going to encourage them and then call upon all governments across Africa to be able to do the same”, he added.

Meanwhile, the AAASMEs boss, noted that the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS is 50 years in 2025, commended the body for being together, and he recognized the successes and challenges within the 50 years.

“And then within this period of economic boost for Abuja, Nigeria, only two days ago, the West Africa Economic Summit was held in Abuja, which was a provision of opportunity for economic cooperation and economic integration for West African states.

“And so it is West African countries being able to, or any country located in West Africa, being able to do business with themselves and being able to speak truth to power, being able to understand a feedback mechanism between themselves”, he said.

He also spoke on the African Union SME Summit commencing June 23, 2025, which Nigeria is the host, with over 6,000 SMEs expected to be in attendance, and according to him (Eradiri), “They are trying to have business linkages within themselves, have a marketplace, access to finance, amongst other areas that SMEs need. We are talking about access to trade, access to innovation, access to technology.

“Is the hosting of the Afriexim Bank, 32nd Afriexim Bank, annual meetings. Now what that means is the Afriexim Bank will have its own annual meetings where they assess what they have done for the period of the year, at the same time, they are also going to have the opportunity of providing, along the sidelines, various meetings and programs on the margins.

“And then I am happy to say that the All Africa Association for Small and Medium Enterprises will be hosting the fourth Africa SME Roundtable, which is specifically targeted at SMEs, and one of the highlights of that Programme happening on the sidelines, on the margins of the Afrexim annual meetings, is that SMEs are looking for access to finance and alternative recipes to finance.”