Women entrepreneurs’ network holds AGM, explores financing options

The women’s networks under the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) recently held its seventh annual general meeting, exploring financing options available for women-owned businesses.

The network tagged NECA Network of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW) explored this issue based on the fact that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had come up with some friendly financial intervention programmes to assist female entrepreneurs because of the daunting processes they experience when trying to access funds from financial institutions for their businesses.

According to a statement by NNEW, this information is known to few while some others do not know about it. Even for those that seem to be aware, they have limited information on what is accessible because the data available show that only very few persons have been able to leverage the available window.

In a bid to address the challenges in accessing funds for businesses owned by female entrepreneurs in Nigeria, the theme of NNEW’s seventh AGM which held recently in Lagos was on “How Female Entrepreneurs can access CBN funds earmarked for SMEs.”

NNEW explored this in collaboration with CBN and CRC Credit Bureau. The participants were informed on how to know their credit rating in order to increase their chances of accessing credit.

NNEW is a platform established in 2005, under the aegis of Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association to promote and nurture entrepreneurship among women. Its vision is to build generations of successful women entrepreneurs with the mission to empower women to embrace entrepreneurship and prosper in business for the general good of the society.

According to Lola Okanlawon, president, NNEW, who reeled out NNEW’s strategies for the new year, the network will register NNEW as a different entity from NECA. She also said the NNEW cooperative was to evolve as a microfinance bank or microfinance institution and the organisation also planned e-learning platform on training, information, and writing. Mentoring, which has been an ongoing thing, would also be further strengthened.

Subscription for the network has been categorised into four groups – up-start entrepreneurs will be expected to pay N5,000 annually for two years, after which they are expected to grow beyond that stage. Entrepreneurs in operation for two to five years would pay N10,000 annually, while standard full membership payment would be N20,000 annually. Fellow members would be expected to pay N50,000.

OLUYINKA ALAWODE