Kuni Tyessi in Abuja
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, AGRA, in partnership with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, SMEDAN, and the Enterprise Development Centre, EDC, Business School, is working to enhance the Nigerian Business Development Services, BDS, ecosystem to improve entry to finance for agricultural Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs.
The BDS ecosystem mission is targeted on fixing challenges limiting agric SMEs from scaling their companies and is presently being applied in Kaduna, Niger and Nasarawa States as pilot states, with plans to lengthen to different states in future programmes.
Disclosing this throughout the remaining pitching contest for youth agripreneurs in Abuja on Thursday, the Program Officer of AGRA, Dr. Godswill Aguiyi, stated agricultural SMEs, notably youth-led enterprises, discover it troublesome to entry finance in contrast to different sectors like oil and gasoline and importation, regardless of their important function in meals safety.
“The obvious problem is that agric SMEs do not have access to finance as it were compared to what you see in other sectors, for example oil and gas, people who do importation get more access to finance from banks, micro finance institutions and stuff like that, but the agriculture practitioners, agric youth SMEs find it difficult to get access to the financing they need to improve their businesses,” Dr. Aguiyi stated.
According to him, one of many actions beneath the mission is the identification of younger entrepreneurs doing excellent work within the agriculture sector, with over 10,000 youths making use of for the competitors which was rigorously screened to about 30 finalists.
“Under the BDS ecosystem project that we are doing with SMEDAN business school and EDC, we are trying to solve some of the problems that are limiting agric SMEs to improve their businesses. We are working in Kaduna State, Niger and Nasarawa State,” he stated.
He stated the initiative can also be geared toward encouraging youths to embrace agriculture at a time many are shifting away from the sector.
“It’s more like an encouragement to youths that are doing agriculture because many youths are running away from this particular sector, not interested to do agriculture because of the obvious reasons,” Dr. Aguiyi added.
Also talking, the Assistant Director, Enterprise Development and Promotion Department and Project Manager of SMEDAN, Dr. Funto Babarinde, stated SMEDAN will disburse N17 million to 10 youth agripreneurs who will emerge winners on the remaining pitching contest of the AGRA-funded mission.
Dr. Babarinde stated the mission is a tripartite association between enterprise faculties, SMEDAN and EDC Business School, funded by AGRA, and designed to strengthen the capability of BDS provision and entry to finance for Agricultural SMEs, AGSMEs, in Nigeria.
“Well, this project is funded by AGRA so basically most of the financing for this project is coming from AGRA and this particular segment of this project is the youth innovation contest, we are looking at about seventeen million being distributed to the agric SMEs and youth specific agric SMEs,” Dr. Babarinde stated.
She defined the goal is to have ten winners from a inhabitants of about ten thousand the place the competitors began.
“These ten winners, the first category will be going home with five million naira, second category will be going home with three million naira and the third category will be going home with two million naira. We also have one million naira for the fourth to the tenth position,” she stated.
On inclusion of ladies and Persons With Disabilities, PWDs, Dr. Babarinde stated gender and incapacity inclusion have been constructed into the mission design to guarantee balanced illustration.
“To actually achieve this, we had inclusion in mind which meant that the pitch must carry a percentage for women, it must also carry a percentage for people with disabilities and also the general public which includes men and other genders,” she stated.
She disclosed that of the 30 finalists pitching, 20 are males and 10 are girls, primarily based on evaluation of their proposals.
“For this we are using 20 out of the 30, 20 are men, 10 are women for this particular pitch. Though that was not specifically indicated, it was a result of the analysis of their proposals that has led to that. We would have preferred more women but of course we can’t just put in the women, they have to be able to pitch their businesses and show that they can actually manage their businesses effectively,” Dr. Babarinde added.
On his half, the Project Coordinator from Jesnoch International offering Technical Assistance to SMEDAN, Aina Godwin Taiye, stated the BDS ecosystem mission has prioritized gender inclusion, with girls making up 40 to 60 per cent of beneficiaries and a minimal of 10 per cent reserved for individuals with disabilities.
“The ratio of men to women, though we have all categories actually covered, men, women and persons with disability, we have a minimum of I think five or ten per cent persons with disability and 40 to 60 per cent women to men,” Taiye stated.
Taiye, who’s from Jesslock International, a number one consulting agency in Nigeria, stated his group is making certain clean operating of the AGRA-funded mission and is the custodian of the programme design and choice standards.
“As the TA we are the custodian of ensuring that the design of the program and to ensure that the top 30, right from the beginning of the design, even the selection of all the top 300 that participated in the online training, they meet the design criteria of fitting into an innovative agricultural space, ensuring that they fit into the age category and of course cover the focal states and by extension nationally,” he added.
