AN NGO, Peace Advocacy and Community Development Initiative (PACDIN), has called for increased synergy between government and financial institutions to empower women in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
The Founder of the group, Mr Mohammed Yusuf, made the call in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja.
Yusuf said the collaboration would aid in empowering more women in various businesses, particularly those in the rural areas and the physically challenged.
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Government at all levels should recognise and take into context people with special needs such as women living with disabilities in SMEs programming in Nigeria and improve synergy between development finance institutions, he said.
He urged the government to show more commitment and political will toward developing women SMEs and ensure availability and accessibility to gender-sensitive grants, loans and other credit facilities for women SMEs.
He called on the government to adopt policies and engage women in its formulation and development, as well as set SMEs targets as goals for states and local government to abide.
He added that “Federal Government should set women SMEs development targets as goals for states, who should, in turn, set same for local government councils as parameters for measuring economic performances of states and provide incentives for high performing states.’’
Yusuf further called for regular sensitisation and enlightenment programmes to educate women on financial, technical and other development support toward building their SMEs.
More than 500 women representatives from 125 local government areas were recently trained on Rural Women Transformation and Entrepreneurship Development in Nigeria by PACDIN and the National Centre for Women Development, Abuja.
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