In a bid to alleviate poverty in Nigeria, the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria on Wednesday said that it is collaborating with the United Nations Development Programme to train 84 women across the country.
The SMEDAN said the training is part of the Federal Government’s collaborative efforts in empowerment of micro, small and medium enterprises in creating job and wealth toward alleviating poverty.
Bature Masari, the Director General of the agency, disclosed this in Minna, Niger State while inaugurating a one-day entrepreneurship sensitization programme for women owned co-operative societies.
Masari, who was represented by his Director of Enterprises Department, Justina David, said the women were drawn from 11 women owned co-operative societies from the six geopolitical zones of North East, North West, North Central, South East, South South and South West.
He said the programme, which is a partnership between UNDP, SMEDAN and the Federal Ministry of Youth Development was designed to cover general entrepreneurship endeavours with special emphasis on women owned co-operative societies.
He said the training would accord priority to managerial training, vocational re-training for the women MSMEs’ co-operative societies in the country.
The agency’s Director General said the training would focus on challenges facing women entrepreneurs such as gender discrimination, sourcing for information, machinery and raw material and establishment of business linkages with large enterprises.
He said the training aims at bringing women entrepreneurs in the country together and harnessing their potentials toward organizing them into trade co-operative groups.
Also speaking, the Country Director UNDP, Dr. Pa Lami Beyai, said small and medium sized entrepreneurs are catalysts to economic development of a country.
Beyai said: “It increases the level of Gross Domestic Product and reduces the unemployment levels in a country.
“It is for this reason that entrepreneurship development is one of the key components of the UNDP programme in Nigeria and indeed other less developed countries.”
Yemisi Akinwumi, chairperson of a women co-operative society from Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, who spoke on behalf other women, appealed to SMEDAN and UNDP to assist the women by providing funds and machinery to establish businesses.
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