The Director-General, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (SMEDAN), Dr Dikko Radda, on Tuesday said the newly established National Council on Small and Medium Enterprises headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is working hard to spur economic development, reduce insecurity and enhance growth of the country.
Radda disclosed this at a one-day workshop on monitoring and evaluation of women’s economic empowerment in Nigeria, organized by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, in collaboration with the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, (NIPSS) , the Development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC), and the Partnership for Advancing Women in Economic Development (PAWED).
Represented by Mr Onesi Lawan, Deputy Director, Policy, Planning, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation department, Radda added that the new council recognized women as a critical segment needing special attention to spur Nigeria’s quest for economic development.
He also disclosed that despite being better managers, women representation in business ownership in Nigeria is very low. The new policy on MSEMs, therefore, has taken cognisance of the role of women and youths in national development.
While assuring that the new national policy will spur economic growth, he urged women to take advantage of its provision to create wealth, provide jobs and reduce insecurity through employment generation.
He added that the National Coordination mechanism for the implementation of MSMEs has 154 new initiatives as the implementation metrics that has identified 29 actions plans across all MDAs to be coordinated by the National coordination mechanism unit to ensure SMEs to be used as the engine room for national development.
In his opening speech, Professor Pam Sha of NIPSS said the institute is working hard to develop policies on women economic empowerment to support national development and growth.
“Women play significant roles in the economic development of Nigeria and these roles must be recognized by the government, communities and those who are working on economic policies of Nigeria to drive this critical sector of the population for national growth,” he said.
The Director, Monitoring and Evaluation of finance ministry, Dr Zakari Lawal while presenting the draft monitoring and evaluation tool that is designed to track government intervention on women economic empowerment at the national and state levels said that, integrating MDAs working on WEE is key to ensure transparency, and accountability.
“This tool, when implemented, will enable citizens, women, and other stakeholders the opportunity to know, track, and monitor investments on women so that either as a group or individuals, women can be able to see what is for us and follow up to ensure implementation’’ he added
He then called on the participants from the 11 MDAs, who are members of the technical working group, to contribute in making the tool workable and to ensure implementation at their various MDAs to track these investments in WEE.
While declaring the workshop open, the Director Projects of the Development Research and Projects Centre, Dr Stanley Ukpai said 2021 has been a phenomenon in the economic development space where several national economic development policies were launched, some of them targeting women.
The Technical working group on Monitoring and Evaluation of women economic empowerment is timely and will go a long way in promoting national economic development.
The 11 ministries, and MDAs participating in the Technical Working Group are the federal ministries of finance, women and social development, and agriculture, Central Bank of Nigeria, Bank of Industries, National Bureau for Statistics, National Productivity Centre.
