NITDA, SMEDAN to institutionalise SMEs in Nigeria

THE National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), have agreed to institutionalise the activities of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the country.

The proposed agreement was revealed at a meeting between NITDA’s Director-General, Mr Kashifu Inuwa, and his SMEDAN counterpart, Mr Olawale Fasanya.

The meeting was held at NITDA’s corporate headquarters, Abuja.

According to Inuwa, institutionalising SME would serve as a catalyst for creating wealth and prosperity, adding that, “We have between 60-90 percent of our businesses under SMEs, but operating informally. How can we formalise them so that even the government can benefit by collecting taxes and have a structure in place to capture the GDP correctly?”.

Inuwa noted that most of the startups the agency deals with are SMEs who are also trying to solve real life problems.

He said, “We see startups as our babies. We have startups solving problems in agriculture, commerce, education and logistics and so on.”

Inuwa added that the world is moving to smart manufacturing whereby one can design anything on one’s system and print it using 3D printer.

“We have Digital Fabrication Lab in our centre (the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics) where you can design all these and manufacture them or prototype them and do mass production,” he said.

He also announced that plans are underway to have facilities everywhere as the goal is for every Nigerian to have access to these kinds of facilities.

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