Fourteen women cooperative societies in Abia State have each received N230,000 grant from Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN), the coordinating agency for micro, small and medium enterprises development in Nigeria, to improve their businesses.
The grant is part of Women in Self Employment Programme (WISE-P) training/empowerment programme of SMEDAN geared towards capacity building (inclusive of entrepreneurship and vocational training) with associated empowerment grants to existing women agri-preneurs.
It also aims at encouraging more women to embrace agri-business development, as a viable business option, facilitate networking among beneficiaries for value addition and inclusive value chain development, as well as encourage the diversification of the economy away from crude oil, using agriculture.
Umar Dikko Radda, director-general, SMEDAN, in an address at the closing ceremony of the Aba-leg of the programme, explained that SMEDAN created a new agribusiness development and extension (AD and E) department as the fulfilment of a long-held desire to enlarge the windows for delivering its core mandate to the Nigerian people.
He stated that the AD and E department now focuses exclusively on agribusiness development, in line with the emphasis of current federal government’s vision to raise 100-million persons out of poverty, over the next four years.
Radda, who was represented at the event by Levi Anyikwa, zonal coordinator, SMEDAN also stated that the mandate of the AD and E department of SMEDAN, includes rural industrialization, post-harvest support services, collaboration with agricultural research and mechanization centres, designing, packaging and promoting agro-related cottage and MSMEs industrial projects, linking agro-businesses to market/finance and extension services, including training, counseling, mentorship and routine on-site visits.
According to him, here, the focus is on providing capacity building (inclusive of entrepreneurship and vocational training) with associated empowerment grants to existing women agri-preneurs.
He affirmed that the programme would procure for them the required mindset and financial enablement to place their businesses on the needed sound footing for impact-in terms of pride, profit and diversification.
He urged the recipients to make full use of the knowledge and financial grant from the intervention, to the betterment of themselves and their businesses, and further to become role models to other women in their communities.
He explained that similar WISE-P activities are currently taken place in Ekiti and Adamawa States.
“As we promised last month, in Umuahia, our presence with you in Aba is the fulfilment of a second occasion in each of the current three (3) States.
Previously, WISE-P was implemented in Kogi, Gombe, Ebonyi in 2018, as well as Kaduna and Akwa Ibom in 2019.
Geraldine Onyekwe Ukachi, of Victoria Global Cooperative Society, an integrated farming cooperative society and one of the benefiting societies, thanked SMEDAN for selecting her group for the programme.
“We are going to inject the grant into our project. Actually, we have birds and we want to go into cropping and with this token, it is going to help us.
“We have known the things that inhibit production and we believe that we would do better with the knowledge that we have acquired from this training”.
She advised women, who are currently not doing anything to take to farming to support their families. She urged them to start with anything available or join other women to pool resources together to start something.
According to her, “I started alone, but when I found out that I couldn’t do it alone, I invited other women and we formed a cooperative society and pooled resources together and we were able to set up a poultry farm”.
For Uzoamaka Osisioma Joy, of Pan Abia multipurpose Cooperative Society, “This training afforded us the opportunity to get close to SMEDAN, to know what they have to offer us and we are grateful, we appreciate what they have done.
“We are going to inject the grant into our business. But, what we learnt in terms of Knowledge is worth more than the money they gave us.
She implored every woman to come into farming. “Before we used to think that farming is not for the educated and we left it for only those in the village”.
Darlington Onuoha Kalu, president general, African Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (AASME), one of the special guests at the closing ceremony, applauded SMEDAN for instituting WISE-P, noting that it would remove so many families out of poverty.
He urged the beneficiaries to extend the knowledge learnt from the training, to other women in their various communities.
