Emmeka Nnamani, Centre manager of South-South Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC), Calabar has disclosed that out of ten thousand six hundred and sixty nine (10,669) participants trained by the centre from April 2013 to June 2017, only three thousand Six hundred and twenty two have been able to access funds to improve their businesses as graduates of the centre.
The SSEDC Centre manager gave the figures in Calabar in an exclusive interview with BDSUNDAY. He appealed to financial institutions in the country to remove the bottlenecks associated with small scale entrepreneurs, especially the SME operators. He disclosed that out of the 3,622 that gained access to funds created over 10,700 jobs, noting that “you can imagine if 10,669 participants were able to access funds to improve their business the number of jobs they could have created.”
He said the SSEDC is an initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN, whose objectives is to help reduce unemployment rate in the country by helping young people have an alternative platform in improving their income by helping them to start up their own businesses.
According to the Centre Manager, the SSEDC also helps existing business owners to strengthen their business structures so that they can re-employ more people. Above all, he said the centre is targeted at job creation.
“The structure of the programme is such that when people build competence, it gives them confidence to venture into business. So the first thing is to help them build that confidence that is required and we have done quite a lot on that.
“You see people who ordinarily could not venture into business, but today are bread winners and expanding their businesses; when you go round, you see our students demonstrating their products in and around the centre. As at today, we have created over 9,000 jobs since 2013,” he said.
“Our programme is 18 months engagement with every participant that comes to SSEDC. Now the first six weeks we engage them in class, teach them business skills, we expose them to bigger business, show them how to manage resources, manage themselves, manage employees, expose them to all that is required to make them to succeed,” he further said.
MIKE ABANG, Calabar
