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SMEDAN seeks more partnerships to support 39.6 million MSMEs in Nigeria

Small and Medium Enterprises Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has disclosed readiness to partner both the public and private sectors in a bid to provide the needed enabling environment for the over 39.6 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria to become globally competitive.

Speaking on Tuesday in Abuja at an event organized by the Agency to mark United Nations (UN) World MSME day, the Director General of SMEDAN, Olawale Fasanya said the Agency was committed to the growth of small businesses in the country.

“We have equally partnered with several Commercial Banks such as Sterling Bank, First Bank, Jaiz Bank and the Nigerian Incentive Risk-Based Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) on measures to reduce the bottlenecks associated with accessing funding windows that is critical to business growth. The partnership seeks to deepen the reach of the Agency’s Matching Fund initiative.

“The Agency is also concluding the process of establishing a Micro-Finance Bank to attend to the peculiar funding demands of the rather endangered Nano and Micro entrepreneurs that account for over 90% of the total MSMEs in Nigeria.

“These huge number of practicing MSMEs are largely informal requiring tailored services that can transit them from their informal status to becoming formal and structured” he stated.

Fasanya further said, “we are also deepening our interventions and supports towards the sustainable development of MSMEs across the States.

“I am glad to report that more than 250,000 direct and indirect beneficiaries have been impacted through some of our flagship programs such as the One-Local-Government-One-Product, Conditional Grant Scheme and National Business Skills Development Initiative.

‘The latest Annual Impact Assessment report showed that more than 46% of beneficiaries of the Agency’s programs have been able to generate extra employments, had access to more funding opportunities and have shown verifiable evidences of increased turnover and markets”.

He noted that the “Agency now have key details of over three million MSMEs in our MSME Mass Registration database. We are working hard to regularly update our MSME database while also working towards ensuring that the data of more than 50% of the total number of MSMEs in Nigeria are fully captured before the close of year 2025 in conformity with the Data Compliance standards.

“Other programs of the Agency that have made significant contributions to the inclusive development of the MSME sector include the Accreditation of the Business Development Service Providers, MSMEs Export Facilitation program in partnership with NEPC and Business Development Service Providers. All these interventions have increased the capacities of various categories of MSMEs by more than 30% within the first 2 years of benefitting from the program.

“We are very aware of the creative minds of Nigeria’s young populace that account for about 68% of our population. As a step to convert the innate talent that most of this segment possess, we started the Talent-Hunt program with special focus on identifying their special skills and converting such talents into enterprise lines.

“We have over the years been able to nudge creative entrepreneurs in the areas of ICT, Fashion, Movie production and metal fabrication. Each participant gets their capacities built in enterprise management and intellectual property laws while the first 3 winners in each states gets varying degrees of grants,” Fasanya explained.

The DG commended MSMEs and all the enablers for joining in the global celebration, stating that “it is a demonstration of our commitment to building an MSME community that will become more resilient, efficient, prosperous and competitive”.

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