SMEDAN partners Google, Facebook on youth empowerment, trains 150 PWD in Lagos - ITREALMS

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The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has entered into partnership with Google and Facebook to train Nigerian youths on small businesses, especially on doing business online, reports ITREALMS.

This is coming as SMEDAN said it has trained some 150 Persons With Disability (PWD) as part of its empowerment for small businesses in Lagos State.

Disclosing these on Tuesday in Lagos at an interactive session in Lagos, the newly appointed Director-General of SMEDAN, Mr. Olawale Fasanya said that the partnership with Google and Facebook is to youth-owned businesses in the online space.

He also disclosed that though some 150 PWD has been trained in Lagos State, 100 of them will immediately get tool kits to start various small business of their choice, while the remaining 50 would be part of the future batch to be empowered with toolkits.

Fasanya pointed out that the latest report on the National Survey of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) by SMEDAN and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had put the total number of enterprises in the sub-sector at over 39 million.

He said, these numbers of MSMEs are providing a total of over 61 million employments and contributing about 49 per cent of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Nigeria.

“As important as the sub-sector is to the national economy, it is still encumbered with several challenges which the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia have further worsened,” he said.

The challenges of MSMEs, he said, usually border on access to finance, market, equipment, information, technical and entrepreneurial skills and workspace.

“These were some of the fundamental challenges that informed the establishment of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) vide the SMIDA Act in 2003,” he said.

Fasanya further revealed that SMEDAN has submitted request to the Commonwealth Secretariat to access the Commonwealth’s technical assistance on Women and Youth Support Programmes with specific focus on training of women entrepreneurs on e-commerce known as “Digital Boot Camp” for women to know how to design their website and carry out trade across borders; Participation in the activities of the Intra-Commonwealth MSME Association with the mandate to create a platform for MSMEs across the Commonwealth to meet, interact and trade through some partnerships; and technical support for research activities by the agency.