By Kingsley Adegboye

The Nimbus Aid Foundation is expanding its support system for women-led small businesses in Nigeria by launching a quarterly capacity-building programme. 

Its leadership says this change reflects a recognition that advertising support alone is no longer sufficient to keep small businesses competitive in a rapidly evolving economy.

The foundation, which has spent eight years providing media placements and advertising inventory to small businesses that cannot afford their own marketing budgets, said the training programme would equip women founders with practical skills in areas such as technology adoption, digital marketing, financial management, and supply chain operations.

Wale Adegoke, founder of the Nimbus Aid Foundation, said the decision to incorporate structured training into the foundation’s work stemmed from his observations of the businesses it supports. 

Findings from beneficiaries indicate that offering business advertising support to increase sales without the operational capacity to fulfil those orders efficiently results in founders losing customers due to the lack of systems to manage growth. Visibility creates opportunity. Training helps you turn that opportunity into something sustainable,” he said.

The first cycle of the programme focused on artificial intelligence and was delivered in partnership with ALX, the pan-African technology training organisation. The workshop introduced women founders to AI tools that can automate routine business tasks, cut operational costs, and help improve decision-making. 

Adegoke said the focus on AI was intentional. “This is the skill that will distinguish businesses that succeed from those that fall behind in the next five years. We wanted to start there.”

The broader context is one of increasing urgency. Women own about 41 percent of micro, small, and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. 

However, they remain significantly underrepresented in technology adoption and the use of digital tools. 

Industry analysts have warned that as AI becomes part of daily business operations, founders who don’t adopt it early risk being pushed out of their own markets by more digitally savvy competitors.

Edward Israel-Ayide, Nimbus Aid Foundation’s communications director, stated that the quarterly training model was designed to build capacity gradually rather than relying on isolated efforts. 

“One workshop alone doesn’t transform a business. However, if you’re providing a founder with advertising support and training her in a different skill every quarter, you’re building something cumulative. After a year, the founder gains visibility, technology fluency, improved financial management, and stronger operations. That is a fundamentally different business from where she started,” he said.

The foundation said it is currently building partnerships with training organisations across various disciplines to deliver the remaining sessions in its first annual cycle. Future topics being considered include inventory and supply chain management, digital branding, and basic data analytics for small businesses.