FG Urged to Establish Entrepreneurship Development Centers

Mr. Gbenga Owolabi, a director of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) South South EDC has urged the federal government to establish more Entrepreneurial Development Centers (EDC) across the country to improve access to affordable costs for aspiring and existing entrepreneurs. This, he made known at an Entrepreneurship Career Fair organized recently by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) in Lagos. He encouraged governments and regulatory institutions concerning education in order for them to ensure that the appropriate entrepreneurship curriculum is well integrated into the standard curriculum of schools at all levels with emphasis on the development of entrepreneurial mindset in addition to business skills. He explained that the need for youths to develop their entrepreneurial skill cannot be overemphasized noting that the number of Nigerians working in paid employment is quite little. He explained that in the United States, small businesses are responsible for a 65-90% of all the jobs created while in other high income countries, small and medium sized enterprises account for 65% employment and contributes 51% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) He reiterated that access to finance is essential to Small and Medium Enterprises’s growth and development and that Nigeria needs to do more when it comes to having sufficient volume of entrepreneurial presence and activities. CBN in 2008, intitiated the Entrepreneurship Development Centers (EDC) in the South West, North West and South East geopolitical zones located in Lagos, Kano and Onitsha respectively. This, Owolabi said was in partnership with the private sector firms appointed as Implementing Agencies (IA) for the EDCs “The CBN extended its partnership to willing State Governments to collaborate in the establishment of 3 additional EDCs in the other geopolitical regions of Nigeria in January 2013. This laudable initiative of the apex bank has begun to yield some positive dividends across the length and breadth of Nigeria. The first set of EDCs in Lagos, Kano and Onitsha have trained over 45,000 individuals, helped to start 8,000 new enterprises and created 12,000 jobs CBN South-South EDC which commenced operation in Calabar January 2013, has trained over 1,600 individuals out of which over 50 percent have stated their enterprises creating close to 1,000 jobs.” he added. Through an integrated entrepreneurship development program and curriculum, he noted that the CBN EDCs provided life-long learning experiences aligned with the entire entrepreneurship development process and enterprise growth stages. He therefore challenged governments at all levels and private sector partnership to initiate, promote, encourage and facilitate development of various platforms and industries that will provide financing options suitable for different stages of growth of enterprises. He further charged state and local governments to also conceptualize, implement, publicize and manage programs to award grants to support the successful start-ups of enterprises through competitive business plan development processes such as the FG’s YouWin Program.