The Director General of the National Centre for Women Development (NCWD) , Mrs. Mary Ekpere-Eta on Monday expressed the commitment of the Centre to improving on the effectiveness of its collaborations with Development Finance Institutions (DFIs).
Speaking during a meeting with officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), led by Attah Joseph, Head Strategy Coordination Office, Financial Inclusion Department, she said the Centre recognized the importance of effectively collaborating with CBN as well as other DFIs in the area of assisting female entrepreneurs in accessing credit facilities and other sources of funding.
Ekpere-Eta stressed that financial inclusion for women is top priority to the Buhari administration, hence the work put into developing mechanisms by which NCWD can assist more women access grants, loans and other forms of financial assistance to set up and expand their businesses.
The D.G explained to Attah and his team that, though NCWD has scaled-up various training programmes for women in areas such as agriculture, ICT and aspects of artisanship, hitherto thought to be the exclusive preserve of men, the Centre has also invested in improving its capacity in assisting women access funding specially designed for female entrepreneurs in the Central Bank and other DFIs.
Ekpere-Eta acknowledged that NCWD has a major role to play in order for the Federal Government to achieve its goal of facilitating the emergence of more female proprietors of Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSME).
The D.G indentified the soon to be opened NCWD Start- Ups Support Centre and the rehabilitation of moribund Women Development Centres in LGAs as low-hanging-fruits, which the Centre and the CBN can immediately collaborate on.
She also sought the support of the apex bank in the area of the providing female entrepreneurs funds to brand and market their products and services.
She assured that data collated by the Centre as part of its basic functions is reliable and can be used by CBN and DFIs to plan and implement interventions targeted at intending and existing female entrepreneurs.
“We have recorded a high level of success, when it comes to training women and providing them with equipment to start up their businesses. But these women and those we will be training in the future need to be supported with funds and even more training for marketing and branding their products and services within and outside the country.
“At the National Centre for Women Development, we know that for businesses to survive , for women to become employers of labor , they need financial support to market their brands competitively”, she said.
In his response, leader of the team from CBN, Attah Joseph, said he was impressed by the work done by the NCWD and the repositioning of the Centre for efficiency and transparency.
He expressed optimism that the collaboration between CBN and the Centre will lead to a significant increase in the success stories from female entrepreneurs, even as many more businesses set up by women will not only survive, but significantly contribute to job creation.
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