Federal Government Pledges Reforms To Boost Women-owned Businesses

The Federal Government has reaffirmed its committedness to strengthening the ecosystem for women entrepreneurs done targeted reforms aimed astatine reducing the outgo of doing business, easing entree to finance, and creating gender-responsive policies that guarantee inclusive economical growth.

Senior Special Assistant to the President connected Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation successful the Digital Economy, Ms. Chayla Shagaya, gave the assurance during her keynote code astatine the 5th Women Enterprise Alliance (WenA) Conference, held successful Abuja with the theme: “Policy Reforms and Resilience Strategies for Small and Medium Enterprises successful a New Economy.”

Shagaya emphasised that the Federal Government nether President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda sees women-led tiny and mean enterprises (SMEs) arsenic “the quiescent economists of each household” and a halfway pillar of Nigeria’s economy.

“Across Nigeria, women entrepreneurs are doing the hard enactment of keeping our system alive, innovating, employing, and solving section problems with planetary relevance. 70% of nationalist submissions connected SME argumentation reforms were from women.

“Reducing the outgo of doing concern is not conscionable an economical imperative; it is simply a motivation work to those who judge successful Nigeria capable to physique her,” she emphasised.

She highlighted government-led reforms specified arsenic the Presidential Power Initiative, integer financing pathways, and taxation harmonisation efforts aimed astatine lowering operational costs for SMEs, galore of which are owned and tally by women.

According to her, the medication has besides launched strategical partnerships with the Bank of Industry (BoI) and different fiscal institutions to amended entree to affordable recognition for pistillate entrepreneurs who often look collateral-related barriers.

“You nary longer request to bring your grandmother’s onshore rubric to unafraid a loan,” she said.

Shagaya besides disclosed that an unfastened integer feedback telephone she hosted received implicit 100,000 responses, with much than 70 per cent coming from women concern owners.

“We aggregated those insights and submitted them to the presidency. This is nary longer a clip for argumentation connected paper; it’s clip for argumentation that reaches radical wherever they are, particularly the women astatine the bosom of our endeavor sector.”

Delivering her address, Founder of WenA, Aisha Babangida, described the league arsenic a strategical gathering to accelerate the translation of nationalist and planetary argumentation commitments into measurable outcomes for women-led enterprises.

She underscored the value of advocacy, noting that galore women inactive deficiency entree to information, capital, and markets, and are often discouraged by rigid and analyzable regulatory frameworks.

“When I founded WenA, I thought passionateness was enough. But it wasn’t. The paperwork, the taxation codes, the licensing rules, these were dense adjacent for those of america with networks. So ideate what it’s similar for a pistillate starting a micro-business successful a agrarian municipality with small support,” she said.

Aisha Babangida praised the enactment of UN Women Nigeria, peculiarly the occurrence of the Affirmative Action Procurement Reform Initiative successful Kaduna State, which has begun to reserve portions of nationalist contracts for women-led enterprises, waived registration fees, and introduced pistillate practice connected procurement boards.

“Inclusive procurement is simply a crippled changer. It is not a concession to women, it is an economical strategy,” she noted.

She announced that WenA would motorboat a nationalist certification programme to hole women entrepreneurs to suffice for nationalist assemblage contracts done due documentation, compliance, and capacity-building.

“Our extremity is not to item problems, but to unlock solutions. Today, we determination from argumentation speech to applicable tools. From exclusion to economical empowerment.”

In her presumption during the pre-conference argumentation workshop, Ms. Aisha Bendo-Alkali of UN Women Nigeria, spotlighted the urgent request to code the load of unpaid attraction work, 1 of the large barriers limiting women’s afloat information successful the economy.

The initiative, supported by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), advocates for care-responsive policies and the integration of women’s economical empowerment into nationalist planning.

“Reducing the load of unpaid attraction is not conscionable a sex equality goal, it is captious to unlocking nationalist productivity,” she said.

Bendo-Alkali praised the illustration acceptable by Kaduna State and called for a nationwide scale-up of inclusive procurement policies, particularly for women successful the informal and micro-enterprise sectors.

Also, astatine the conference, Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Dr. Zacch Adedeji, outl...