The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) intends to generate 444,000 direct jobs and an additional 1,776,000 indirect jobs from the training of 300 youths in every state off the federation.
The agency in this year alone, has trained 11,000 artisans and youths in the 36 states of the federation and the federal capital territory.
The youths, during the five days training programme, were trained on Personal and Business Visioning, Business Plan Development, Identification of Business Opportunities, Selling and Marketing strategies, Accessing Business Finance, Customer care and Legal and Regulatory Issues.
A statement by the Corporate Affairs Unit of the Agency noted that the National Business Skills Development Initiative (NBSDI) is a programme designed to support the entrepreneurship component of the National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP), a tripartite intervention by SMEDAN, ITF, and BOI to fill the capacity gap of the youths. The programme was designed to absorb the graduates of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF)’s vocational skills training programme.
The initiative, according to the statement, was designed to ensure that more professional services will be provided by local and well trained young artisans thereby leading to reduction in job losses to immigrants from neighboring countries.
The statement quoted the Director, Enterprise Development and Promotion department of the Agency, Monday Ewans as saying that the programme focuses on providing entrepreneurship and business management skills to the trained artisans so that they can sustain their businesses over a longer period of time.
Ewans also said that the training programme seeks to pursue a drastic reduction in dependency poverty as most of the out of school youths who still rely on stipends from parents are empowered to become self-reliant.
Ewans said that the Agency developed and delivered need-based entrepreneurship training curriculum that would help the participants to prepare bankable business plans that the Agency would submit and follow up with the Bank of Industry (BOI) and the Central Bank of Nigeria in respect of having access to loans under the Agri-Business/Small and Medium Enterprises Investment Scheme (AGSMEIS).