The NEDEP programme, according to the Minister, is geared towards creating an additional 350,000 direct and indirect new jobs between now and 2015 in “Kano State alone.”
The Kano MSME council, which is the first to be inaugurated in the country, is to be used as the driving mechanism for all enterprise development programmes across the country. The council will report to the National Council on MSME, which will soon be inaugurated by President Goodluck Jonathan.
The Council on MSMEs has its membership drawn from Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN), Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Bank of Industry (BoI), National Association of Small Scale Industries (NASSI), NASME, KACCIMA, various private organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
It (Council) will also ensure the creation of an enabling environment to facilitate the development of MSME clusters, infrastructure upgrade, access to finance, and MSME capacity building.
In his address, the Director General, SMEDAN, Alhaji Bature Umar Masari, explained that NEDEP is being implemented under three pillars namely technical, vocational skills acquisition and entrepreneurship training and access to finance, adding that the entrepreneurship training component of NEDEP is being anchored under the programme ‘One Local Government, One Product (OLOP).
Masari recalled that the pilot project of OLOP programme was conducted in Kano and Niger States from September 2010 to July 2011 and in the course of its implementation, baseline survey and value chain analysis was carried out and business development services were delivered to approximately 50 selected enterprises that manufacture six products in both states.
He said: “the agency has conducted sensitisation programmes, needs assessment and selected products based on competitive advantages in all the 44 government areas of the Kano state, and the products identified include leather products, groundnut oil, rice, sugar cane, date palm and soya beans and tomato which will be developed and processed in the various local governments areas for sales to the end users’’
Meanwhile, Aganga has commended the Kano state Government for taking the bold initiative in composing the MSME council. ‘This goes to show the commitment and determination of the Kano state Government to empower its people’. He particularly lauded Governor Kwankwaso for creating 250,000 entrepreneurs, of which 80 per cent are women.
The minister said the programme is in line with the ministry’s commitment to create jobs, generating wealth and enhance economic growth that the MSME council came on board and became the top target of the ministry to achieving such.
Nigeria currently has 17.3 million MSMEs, which represent 96 per cent of the businesses in the country. The sector has also contributed 75 per cent and 47 per cent to Nigeria’s labour and GDP respectively, he added.
Aganga explained that; “the major critical inhibiting factors for MSMEs were access to finance, markets, lack of adequate infrastructure, lack of skills and business development and entrepreneurship training, as a result my ministry has developed NEDEP as new, strategic and revolutionary way of delivering enterprise development in Nigeria aimed at revitalising MSME sectors.”
The main objective of NEDEP is to create 3.5 million direct jobs or 5 million indirect and direct jobs by 2015.
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