Mrs. Angela Ajala is an educationist and Executive Director, Ladela Schools in Nigeria. She is also the National President, Business and Professional Women (BPW), and the Deputy National President, African Women Entrepreneurial programme. In this chat with ENE OSANG she advises women to embrace agriculture saying there is a lot to gain.
Can we meet you?
My name is Angela Ajala, an Educationist and an Administrator and the Executive Director of Ladela Schools in Nigeria. I am also the National President Business and Professional Women (BPW), and the Deputy National President African Women Entrepreneurial programme.
How would you describe the role of women in national building?
I think the Nigerian woman are the most hardworking women in the face of this planet, very entrepreneurial, very cheerful even when going through difficulties they are able to sacrifice. They are sacrificial people who are able to bear a lot under pressure, the Nigerian women are able to give their last for the sake of their children and home, they are able to innovate and create and they have been contributing their quota to the growth of the country.
How have you been able to thrive in the midst of the challenges you mentioned?
What I do and also encourage women to do is to stand for excellence wherever you are. Excellence does not show male or female, once your level of competence is very clear in the things you do, they would have noticed the competence and merit in what you do before they know the gender. I believe we should do the things we need to do excellently well and be an example wherever we go.
Did you study business in school what inspired you into business and entrepreneurship?
I didn’t study business I studied English but business is a passion for me. What inspired me was that it was easier because over time I began to notice that it will take 10men an hour to get something done but before one week a women we get it, so we just decided that nobody will help us if we don’t help ourselves and that was why we decided to bring up women and encourage them to empower other women when they get to certain positions because the men empower themselves.
I remember when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) MD Christine Lager came to Nigeria, we had a dinner with her and she told us whenever there is vacancy for recruitment the men come up with many names so she devised a means by compiling names of super qualified women so whenever there is a vacancy she also present names of women so it has to be a deliberate thing to do else nobody will help us because women get to top positions and forget fellow women, if you are a Minister for instance you should empower other women when need be because there are many capable women.
What do you do basically in your association?
We try to empower women and develop their potentials, leadership skills, we try to mentor them and make sure they are able to achieve great heights in their various fields of interest.
How many women have benefitted from your empowerment programme?
In counting since I took over as the National President is over 5000 because we have adopted communities we have worked with.
We are in over 15 states in Nigeria and every state at the beginning of the year have a mandate for instance we could say this year, make sure we reach 10,000 women through cervical and breast cancer advocacy and screening, or make sure you are reaching 500 women through economic empowerment and ensure they are trained and given empowerment grants and things like that so we always have our target and timeline.
What is your agenda for this year?
For this year, we are encouraging women to take Agriculture more seriously. You don’t have to go into the farm to be an agric person the value chain in agric is so vast and we are telling women the opportunities are immense and they should slot themselves into one.
What are these value chains?
Women can go into packaging for instance, there are women that package ogbono, egusi etc and sell at the West African coast, they are not the farmers so there are a lot of value chain opportunities one can key into. There is a role you can play in the value chain because there is somebody that plants, another harvests, process, package and those that take to the market.
How can women be successful in business when they don’t have enough capital?
What we are putting together now is to have clusters in different organisations for example: if there are women in my organisation who are interested in agric, we urge them to form themselves into a cluster so with fashion and other business then we take these clusters and we are approaching the banks and the cooperatives to say this is a cluster of about 50 women in agric, can we guarantee them to a loan of 100million to scale up what they are doing? So it’s easier to deal with clusters than individuals so we are telling women to come together so we can be able to get finances and spread to them for business.
You are saying women should not depend on government?
Nobody should depend on government, what we are saying is that government institutions are there, how do we leverage on them and get facilities from government? We need to rearrange ourselves by making ourselves attractive to government, our businesses have to be structured; when you don’t keep your books, your finances you expect the banks to just give you a loan? It doesn’t work that way and that is why we are saying do the right things so that you can attract the right opportunities.
Are grassroots women considered in your empowerment programmes?
The only thing we do is to work with rural women because if they don’t get it right there won’t be food on our table.
Here in Abuja we adopted about three communities and Pyakasa a community along airport road is one of them and we have taken them through trainings both to build their capacity as well as give them opportunity to learn certain skills to enable them make money and even train others. We have done cancer screening for all the women there, de-warming for their children, literacy teaching like basic English and math so they can keep record/account of their books so that if they want to borrow even 50 thousand they will know how to structure it so those are the kind of women we are working with we just make sure our women are empowered.
How do you joggle between all you have to you?
I try to priotize my day and I achieve a lot doing that.
What would you say you have achieved in life?
For me every day is a day of achievement also, the fact that I am able to impact lives of other women.
What is your message for women?
Find yourselves, stand out and be the light and make a difference.
