The Nigeria Competitiveness Project (NICOP) which is implemented and funded by the German Development (German Cooperation) has trained no fewer than 28 clusters of women entrepreneurs and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) on self-financing and loan accessing to enhance their businesses.
The training which was held in Kano yesterday, gathered women across various value chains including tomato farmers, garment and leather processors among other artisans and that each of the 28 groups has 20 members.
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Speaking to journalists at the event, head of the project, which is co-funded by the European Union (EU), Ana Vinambres, said the Peer Learning Workshop for Self-Financing Communities (SFC) is targeted at training the beneficiaries on ways to improve quality of their products and access new market.
She said since the commencement of the project in 2019, Kano has been one of their targets and that they have empowered over 3000 people with training and non-interest loan of N200 million from Jaiz Bank.
“The target of today’s programme is to support women to have internal savings by setting up saving and loan groups among themselves. This will equip them with strategies to have access to finance and investment and also improve their financial literacy and inclusion.
“We want to empower small holder farmers to grow their business, generate more incomes and generate more employment. That is why we are doing this; at least they can access loan from internal sources and financial banks,” she said.
A garment processor, Zulaiha Baffa, said, “We have been doing business in the past not knowing how we can utilise the little we are earning to support ourselves.
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