Nourishing Africa has partnered with MasterCard Foundation and the United States African Development Foundations (USADF) to launch the Entrepreneur Support Program (ESP). This program is carefully designed to provide capacity building by training and providing technical advisory and catalytic financing to Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria’s agriculture and food value chains.
In February 2021, the ESP scheme was launched and aimed to train 20,000 young agripreneurs. The beneficiaries were selected from a pool of over 30,000 applicants across 11 states in Nigeria, including Abia, Anambra, Delta, Edo, FCT, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Ogun, Osun, and Oyo States.
The capacity-building scheme will also provide grants (up to N3.5 million) to 125 MSMEs from the selected 20,000 trainees. The beneficiaries of this program will also have easy access to credit, business resilience diagnostic tools and will also participate in a seminar on agribusiness entrepreneur development.
The program lead at Nourishing Africa, IfyUmunna, revealed that the ESP is particularly interested in the micro and small-scale enterprises own by young Nigerians between the ages of 20 and 40, who are actively engaged in livestock, food and cash crops value chains. The ESP will provide inputs and primary production to processing. Also, the scheme will handle logistics, storage, and distribution to revitalize and strengthen such businesses.
IfyUmunna further explained, “We aim to empower and equip the participants with needed tools, resources, and opportunities necessary to achieve our goal of self-sufficiency in food production in Nigeria and create meaningful impact agri-food industry, not only in Nigeria but in Africa at large.”
“The Nourishing African Entrepreneur Support Program aims to build the selected participants’ capacities and improve their businesses’ profitability and sustainability. ESP will also help build these agripreneur’s resilience, which is critical to dealing with future shocks in the industry. We believe in the growth of the talented young agripreneurs who will be equipped to lead the industry for years to come.”
The USADF President and CEO, C.D. Glin, said the partnership with Nourishing African and MasterCard is in tandem with the USADF’s goals to support African enterprises via grants, capacity building, etc. opportunities. He further said that the program would help the participants streamlining their business strategies and redefining them for growth as they navigate the uncharted COVID-19 environment while leveraging ICT, innovation and data.
He also said, “The inclusion of technology, innovation and expose to new advances in the agricultural sector will boost the use of smart tech. and cost-effective innovations in the agriculture and food industry in Nigeria.”
MasterCard Foundation’s Country Head in Nigeria, Chindinma Lawanson, explained that the lack of foresight mostly reduces the MSMEs access to market, capacity, training and funding opportunities. He also stated that these challenges must be addressed to realize the country’s food and agriculture sector’s potential, which is driven by the grossly underserved Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises.
Chindinma further said that “agriculture is the mainstay of the Nigerian economy. Aside from providing food and raw materials for industries, it also provides employment opportunities to a large percentage of the Nation’s population, including youth and women. This emphasizes the importance of our partnership as it assists greatly in building capacity to alleviate hunger and increase the sector’s skills and opportunities.”
Furthermore, the Entrepreneur Support Program has also partnered with different organizations, including the Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture, Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), African Women in Leadership, AgriCayalyst Innovation, Young Farmers Association of Nigeria, etc.
