By Ezra Ukanwa – Abuja

As part of its contribution to drive entrepreneurship development in Nigeria, a Non-Governmental Organisation: Micro Sector Development Initiatives, MISEDI, on Tuesday, said it is poised to explore and bring finance opportunities to women in the micro, small and medium enterprises, MSMEs.

Speaking during the ‘one-stop shop business clinics and sensitization programme’, in Abuja, the Executive Director, MISEDI Empowerment Initiative for Africa, Efosa Onyezebe, stated MSMEs were the engine of growth in any economy, with them dominating the private sector space and creating Job opportunities for unemployed Nigerians.

While pointing out that the MSMEs in Nigeria is not at the level where it is needed to be, she said the MISEDI Empowerment initiative for Africa, is on a mission to assist the Nigerian women export their products in order to gain international visibility.

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According to her, we are not where we are supposed to be, but we still need to do more for entrepreneurs in Nigeria. MISEDI, is one of the things we are passionate about. We are passionate about seeing women product brands having visibility internationally.

“One of our focus areas is the export markets. How do we promote Nigeria and make it go to the export market? We know that critically, you can not do a lot without finance. You can not scale up; you can not produce the level of quality because you don’t have the right machineries.

“So, MISEDI is partially about harnessing and bringing finance opportunity to our women. What we are doing practically to make this happen is that, currently, we are having a grand class that is ongoing with one of our partners in the US. They are teaching women how they should  write their own brands, and then the partner is still going to support them to see opportunities out there for grants for the women to run.

“Also, we just finished a skill acquisition programmeon beautyand aesthetics, because they also empower women on practical skills. For some women, they don’t even know what is their variable in the international market; what kind of product should they put out there? And we also did a field acquisition on beauty, aesthetics on how to train women how to make their beauty products. We are planning another skill acquisition with Access Bank, one in FCT and Kano”, she added.

Earlier in his remark, the Managing Director, Abuja Enterprise Agency, AEA, Shehu Abdulkadir, said the Agency is: “at the forefront trying to create the necessary opportunities to create values.”

He, however, noted that the Agency’s goal is to ensure the MSMEs sector accounts contributes immensely to the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, of the country.

Speaking on the sideline of the event, the Coordinator Federal Capital Territory MSMEs, David Aruleba, stated that the MSMEs one-stop shop was established in 2018 to get rid of “bottlenecks” in a bid to advance entrepreneurial activities in Nigeria.

His words: “MSME one-stop shop was established in 2018 following the visits of the Vice President to various states to host the national micro small and medium enterprise clinics or the national MSME clinics. It was observed that a lot of micro small and medium enterprises have been experiencing lots of bottlenecks and challenges having to certify or get their licences and register their businesses for the purpose of operating their businesses optimally in Nigeria.

“Every state was mandated to set up a one stop shop, and it was on that basis that the FCT Administration mandated that the Abuja Enterprise Agency under which the MSMEs one stop shop is set up also established”, he averred.

Vanguard News Nigeria