Going by the transformation agenda of the present administration, experts are of the view that the major target should be at improving the living standard of those at the grassroot. The President/Founder of Growing Business Foundation (GBF), Dr. Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien speaks with GLORIA EZEIRU, on this, giving insights on the efforts of her foundation in growing young businesses especially empowering women.
What is GBF’s mission?
The vision of the GBF says, ‘sustainable economic development led by socially responsible business and individuals’. Our major target was how to change the lives of the poor at the grassroot level, how we can help them improve their lives by starting up a business, help them grow it, especially the women. I believe providing little loan to women would make a difference.
Remember those days when it is believed that a poor man can never own a mobile phone, even if one person said it, many people agreed, the thinking as at that time was that poor people cannot own a phone, in that same way, the thinking was that a poor person cannot take a loan and repay and the second thing is that poor people do not save. GBF coming into existence was really to address two things, one is to make people understand that poor people can save and they can take loan and repay.
In fact, poor people are more likely to repay their loan than rich people and poor people are more likely to repay their loan even if there were no collateral because they believe in a very strong value, trust, equity, reputation, and above all women are more likely to repay their loan than men, and if you invest in women, loans are repaid, women save, and if you invest in women, a woman is more likely to invest her income from her business in her family.
This is why we are involved in the microfinance conferences with the Central Bank of Nigeria and also why we are involved in the CBN today with other banks, to say that the best way to develop our rural communities is to invest in women; because the women will invest in their children, household, and in their communities and the women are less likely to go any where.
The only thing that makes a woman move out of her community is when they marry, that is when they switch communities at the rural level. The second premise is that unless we develop our rural communities this country cannot transform, and we really cannot achieve our targets.
How did the foundation begin?
We did a lot of research in the Niger Delta and we realized that there is a lot of poverty in the region, and because women are poor, they can no longer control their sons, once women cannot control their sons and help their son imbibe value, which they can only achieve by being able to provide for them, feed them, send them to school and hold their respect, once you as a mother lose your son’s respect, he will never respect a woman, once you have sons at large that don’t have a home, they feel disenfranchised by the society, and begin to have youth restiveness, coupled with poor education, no health care, very few jobs and an economy with crisis, you will have a group of vulnerable young men who are vulnerable to anybody who comes to them with any means of survival, because they are hopeless, they don’t have opportunities.
So what we did in 1999 when we started, was to firstly, raise a focus on the need to enhance the microfinance, not saying the microfinance can transform the economy, but it would go a long way in addressing the livelihood of those starting small.
The idea was to awaken the business consciousness of individual Nigerians to understand that unless we all take collective responsibility for Nigeria and begin to do practical things like financing others, in order to help our country to rise from the bottom to the top, we may not be able to grow our businesses, think of a secured peaceful tomorrow. That is the origin of the foundation- GBF.
Your web-based initiative to grow businesses, what is it all about?
Using the story of the mobile phone initiative, in 2000 before the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) company started, GBF did a survey across the country, in 14 states in particular, for the Nigerian Communication Commission, we were asking people for their priorities, how would they prioritise water, light, communication, which were the three main priorities in the country.
And we thought to ourselves, much like the finances, where people believe that poor people don’t need loans, can’t manage and pay loans, then what will poor people do with these phones.
Then we did something, there is this lady, in 2002, she was one of the first five women which we gave a loan of N69,000 to acquire a telephone, Sim card and airtime for her phone, today, this lady built her business around that, she was a poor woman who did not have any resources, she had a small provision store in the middle of the market. Imagine what GSM technology did for her, today she controls 16,000 women entrepreneurs, all of which businesses have loans for one thing or another across twelve states.
And for the last three years, one of her? 16,000 women has always received an award, and she has always come to receive too. In other words, you plant a small seed and you watch it grow and its amazing how it grows.
Now phone are all over the place, we are at the next stage which is on how to get businesses to leverage the internet, the internet is free, provided we have enough bandwidth to be able to take and download, there are so much information out there in the cloud more than we will be able to use, and there are so much right here on the ground in terms of businesses, in terms of amazing men and women all across the country who are doing unbelievable things.
The idea is to try and connect the information that is up there with the information that is down here using the web. Creating a web to create an opportunity attracts some cost which we were able to raise the funds to pursue, so we are hoping that young people, growing businesses, owning businesses will come in here and learn what the social media and the web can help them do to grow their business, whether it is facebook, twitter, any other social media they chose to advertise their businesses which they can do for free.
Secondly, is to understand the value of a business card and just have their email address on it where people can go and check and understand the kind of business they sell. Thirdly is to be able to understand that having a bank account and potentially running a point-of-sale terminals were a bank is taking just 1.5 per cent of all of your turnover, allows you to separate your personal account from your business account, it helps you to think more rationally and different on how to manage your business and create your feasibility so that people can reach you and know the particular product you sell.
We are hoping it would expand, we participated in ICT and youth empowerment programme for 360 young people who will acquire a laptop and other building context and solutions for young entrepreneurs.
Things like this don’t exist, somebody will have to create it, So we are trying to get one set of young people who are already Information Technology services creative, and trying to get another set of young businesses to come here and not to think of creating a website is only for geniuses, they will build their website themselves, they will get coaching, step by step and before they leave they will have their own website, have their competences and ability to go in there and change it, upgrade and mend it and have the confidence to tell people, here is my card, check out my website, because there is more information they can put in there without even moving an inch. That is what we are hoping to empower people on.
What is your drive to grow businesses of young entrepreneurs?
GBF is interested in growing young businesses, our interest is really for the people at the bottom of the pyramid to gain access to resources. Whatever that is whether it is access to finance, knowledge or market, it is really needed.
We are interested in what drives the small businesses in becoming huge. Aliko Dangote has done it, he started as a small business man and today he is big. We can do it our own way, as Nigerian firms using our own value system, not just for Nigeria but across Africa.
I have spent about five years working for the country, I did work for the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Finance and economic management team on job creation, also presidential summit on job creation, I organised that, also worked with the CBN on microfinance conferences and entrepreneur awards.
As a result of GBF vision, I found myself working for the public sector, private sector and the civil society. It’s only when you get the three together you can achieve a big goal on the entrepreneurship development, because if people are not rich the country is not rich.
?