Moses Uwagbale
The Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) trained more than 10, 000 young entrepreneurs in the North East region in 2020 on how to manage small businesses profitably.
Mr Isa Doguwa, the Zonal Coordinator, SMEDAN North East Region, disclosed on Wednesday in Bauchi.
Doguwa said that compared to 2019, SMEDAN recorded huge success in terms of training and empowerment in the year under review.
“The agency is well known now with a lot of patronage from entrepreneurs in the region, it has trained and empowered more than 10,000 young entrepreneurs across the North East region.
“The training was a package to address the problems identified by SMEDAN leading to the failure of small businesses.
“We have taken time to train the young entrepreneurs on some deficiencies and we created a curriculum that would enhance their management skills.’’
Doguwa explained that beneficiaries were put through a sensitisation programme before the training on how to manage small businesses profitably.
“We like to reach as many Micro Small Medium Enterprises sector (MSMEs) as are crucial and imperative to achieve the goal of Micro Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (MSME)-led economic growth, industrialisation and job creation.
“The manual for the training includes how to become an entrepreneur, identity business opportunities, sales and marketing skills and how to secure capital to start a business.’’
Others, Doguwa said were “to do business, how to keep business records, regulatory issues, developing business models and business plans’’.
According to him, the agency has a lot of packages on MSMEs development programmes for the entrepreneurs across the country.
He said that young entrepreneurs who have existing businesses were qualified to access grant through the process with commercial bank to manage their Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
The zonal coordinator said the intervention was to reinforce the agency’s commitment toward ensuring the ease of doing business for entrepreneurs.
He, however, called on all small and medium scale business holders to take advantage of the ongoing MSMEs mass registration taking place in the region and register.
