To stem the challenge of lack of funding amongst small scale business women, a non-governmental organisation; African Women Entrepreneurship Programme (AWEP) has said it is poised to assist on how to position such businesses in order to access funding.
AWEP noted that it realised that the funds were always available but many times some business women lack information on how to access them and sometimes get weary of filling forms.
AWEP’s national president, Angela Ajala, during a press briefing Thursday, said the upcoming annual general meeting of the NGO holding in Abuja would address issues that bother on accessing funds for the small medium entrepreneurs (smes).
While giving a historical perspective on the NGO, Ajala said the Nigerian chapter established in 2010 and inaugurated in 2013, was set up by the US Department of State to help women in the nonoil sector to fulfil the Africa Growth and Opportunities ACT (AGOA).
She explained that the vision of AWEP in Nigeria “is to position women businesses across global borders and platforms and we do this by building a network of highly skilled business women by providing them valuable information, given them access to finance, access to market, access to opportunities that can scale up their businesses in domestic market, regional and international market.
“Our mandate is that if you lift up a woman to succeed in business, the nation is likely to succeed and smes are the engine growth of any nation and a lot of women are playing in the sector of the smes but many of the lack information to access, information to market and all that and so we partner with the relevant government agencies to make sure that we provide this platform to make the women scale up their businesses and one of the major challenges to businesses is funding.
“We have realised that the funds are there. Many times the information information is not available, the accessible is not available and women just get weary if filling forms and all that. This year’s conference particularly has been targeted to deal with the issue of funding.
“Over the years we have taken every nagging challenge that our businesses go through and we tried to position our women, we have gone through scaling up their businesses, we have gone through providing corperate governance, we have gone through export strategy for them because our mandate is that our women should export.”
Also speaking, chairman of the local organising committee, AWEP 2019 AGM, Emilia Csaszar, stated that this year’s theme: Positioning for Funding, was carefully chosen so that women will know how to position their business properly to enable them access this funds for their businesses.”
She said a seasoned veteran and the chief executive officer (CEO) of Ocean Eleven Foods, Dr Lanre Philips, would be the keynote speaker of the AGM.
Other panellists, according to her, would be on board to also speak of critical areas of accessing funding, how to ensure you have a good business plan, to ensure that your structures are in place, to know the different regulatory requirements concerning having a business when it is looked at, you have such opportunity to access funds.