- Venture Capital Needed to Grow Entrepreneurship –Experts
Experts and stakeholders have proposed the deployment of venture capital funding to groom more entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
Venture capital is financing that investors provide to start-up companies and small businesses that are believed to have long-term growth potential. Venture capital generally comes from well-off investors, investment banks and other financial institutions.A former President of Tanzania, William Mkapa, while delivering a presentation at the 2017 Annual General Meeting of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria insisted that for Nigeria to grow its industrial base, it needed to create more entrepreneurs like Dangote and other successful private sector operators.
He said, “I am fully aware of the robustness of Nigeria’s private sector that has seen the emergence of the likes of Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Tony Elumelu, among others.
“Governments and private entities need to develop policies and incentives that seek to encourage many more Nigerian youths and women to venture into business.”
However, small businesses do not have access to finance that will enable them to grow into the likes of Dangote, Adenuga, Elumelu and Femi Otedola.
Mkapa said venture capital funding was one of the solutions to this challenge, adding, “Support systems such as venture capital funds, business advisory centres, shared office space, supply quota for women and young manufacturers, and provision of patient capital, among others, will go a long way to revive the spirit of entrepreneurship which is already existent in Nigeria.”
The Chief Executive Officer, GrowAfrica, Mr. William Asiko, said during a stakeholders’ forum on agriculture that practitioners in the agro-allied sector needed more support in terms of funding to grow the sector.
He disclosed that GrowAfrica worked with venture capitalists and donor agencies to provide funding for operators in the agricultural value chain.
The aim of this, according to him, is to leverage the potential of agriculture for economic growth and job creation, particularly among farmers, women and youths.
He added that his organisation brokered collaboration between governments, international and domestic agriculture companies, and smallholder farmers in order to lower the risk and cost of investing in agriculture, and improve the speed of return to all stakeholders.
Also, the Federal Government has mobilised over N2bn as equity investment through qualified fund managers for the SMEs under the Youth With Innovation Entrepreneurship programme.
According to the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, the need to attract co-investment funding for the SMEs under the scheme is born out of the conviction that it will help to stimulate and sustain the economic recovery plan being implemented by the Federal Government.
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udoma, stated in his speech at a media briefing on the preparations for the 23rd edition of the Nigerian Economic Summit that at the venue of the summit, small business start-ups would be linked with venture capital firms that were interested in funding new and viable business ideas.
