GEEP, Tradermoni lauded as one of biggest microcredit schemes

With over 2 million beneficiaries currently accessing credits for diverse micro-business initiatives, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) alongside its pet-projects, Tradermoni, Marketmoni and Farmermoni has been lauded as the biggest microcredit scheme in the world by international bodies.

The United Nations Commission in its 62nd session in March in New York was first to commend the Federal government’s initiative for pushing the envelope of microcredit innovation and digital loan operation to massive scale.

In spite of the controversy the scheme generated during the elections, the global governing body highlighted the economic impact of the scheme which has enrolled over 2 million Nigerians, 54.2 per cent of whom are women, calling it one of the biggest government microcredit schemes in the world.

Also, the combined efforts of the African Leadership Initiative and the University of Oxford on Tuesday extended a 2019 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellowship to the Chief Operating Officer of GEEP, Uzoma Nwagba together with 22 other emerging African leaders picked across the continent.

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The Desmond Tutu Fellowship is set up by AFLI and Oxford to identify and cultivate young African leaders whose works have achieved “far-reaching impact on the continent.”

The selection into the lifelong Fellowship attests to Nwagba’s role in delivering an impactful tech-based SME intervention program and largest public microcredit scheme in the world.

Established in 2016, GEEP has registered over 7million micro-enterprises and delivers access to finances using a digitalised loan operation, positioning of Bank Verification (BVN) as digital collateral to aid finance inclusion, use of facial recognition, GPS-based mapping, profile of candidates to markets and an exhaustive data capture as novel approaches to make formal and informal sector.