IMPACT OF WOMEN ON NIGERIA’S ECONOMY

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IMPACT OF WOMEN ON
NIGERIA’S ECONOMY

4 Mins. Read

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IMPACT OF WOMEN ON NIGERIA’S ECONOMY

Women in Nigeria account for 41% of the ownership of micro-businesses within the country with 23 million female entrepreneurs operating within this segment. Nigeria is placed amongst other sovereign states with high female entrepreneurs globally. The high-level participation of female entrepreneurs in the country is however often driven mainly by necessity, which is expected when there is a high rate of unemployment. Necessity-driven entrepreneurs are those who are pushed into starting businesses because they have no other source of income.

Consequently, despite the high level of female entrepreneurs in Nigeria, there are challenges and barriers in the country that limit women from scaling up their businesses. Women are scaling up the formal sector, and important results are emerging. At the lower levels of the formal sector, women employment ratio has begun to even out at a 60–40 split in the workplace the genders with men still nudging ahead for now. However, as both genders climb up the corporate ladder, women begin to decline in representation on the senior leadership and at the board level.

IMPACT OF WOMEN ON NIGERIA ECONOMY

The informal sector contributes to 60% of Nigeria’s entire economy, women’s participation in SMEs accounts for the larger percentage. Firstly, many women are engaged in agriculture which is the mainstay of most of the economies in Africa and Nigeria is no exception as it is one of the largest contributors to its GDP. Secondly, women participate have become active participants in the organized sector. The last is their involvement in the informal sector. The informal sector in Nigeria denotes economic activities in all sectors of the economy that are operated outside the purview of government regulation. This sector may be invisible, irregular, parallel, non-structured, backyard, underground, unobserved or residual.

In Nigeria, informal economic activities encompass a range of small-scale and largely self-employed activities. Measuring the activities in Nigeria’s informal sector is difficult. Nonetheless, they are dynamic, retail, and subsistence in nature but significantly contribute to the general growth of the society and contribute to both household and personal income. They entail the use of traditional methods of production, traditional occupations such as transport, retail trade, repair services, cloth dying (adire making), restaurant, buy and selling, etc. can be found in that sector. Due to family responsibility, cultural and social responsibilities, alongside lack of skills or formal education amongst other reasons, women engage in majorly in petty trading by setting up their enterprises to earn income in the informal sector.

According to the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment, Nigeria has over 37.07 million micro, small and medium-scale enterprises, MSMEs, and they account for more than 84 percent of total jobs in the country. The ministry also stated that the MSME enterprises in Nigeria also account for about 48.5 percent of the gross domestic product, GDP, as well as about 7.27 percent of goods and services exported out of the country and which is majorly controlled by women. Based on the total numbers of MSMEs in Nigeria, Micro Enterprises account for the bulk with 36,994,578 enterprises (about 99.8 percent), while small enterprises took 68,168, and medium enterprises 4,670. Lagos, Oyo, and Kano State are the top three states in Nigeria with the highest number of MSMEs in Nigeria. Its therefore easy to improvise from this figures and facts stated that women’s participation in businesses plays a key role in driving economic growth and social development.

CHALLENGES FACING WOMEN IN SMES:

Access to funding: Limited availability of funding from financial institutions and the government. This undoubtedly slows down the growth of SMEs and their participation in the economy.
High interest rates on loan facilities inclusive of the short maintenance time range and costs as well as the demand for duly registered collateral obligations.
Inconsistency in Government policies and support facilities from all levels of government and economic institutions.
Multiple taxation as a result of levies and other tax expectations from both the State and Local Government Areas makes setting up businesses and its sustainability difficult.
Lack of infrastructures like power supply, good roads, transportation system to drive cost down.
Unavailability of raw material.
High cost of procuring machinery for production.
Devaluation of Naira against Dollar.
Import Liberalization and cost.
Export constraints and difficulty in getting the right trade partner.

Notwithstanding the setbacks and challenges confronting Small and Medium Enterprises, if properly equipped, they can grow the economy and contribute more to Nigeria’s growth so that She can take its place on the world stage.

An enabling platform to do this is BlackBox. Blackbox would create room for healthy and operational business creation as well as enable a seamless means of carrying out business activities thereby creating healthy competition among SMEs and will attract both local and foreign investors. It will also encourage the creation of employment opportunities in the country, contribute to the growth of the national income thereby increasing the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the contribution of women to this.

Conclusion

As Nigeria remains one of the brightest economic spots in Africa, it should focus on ways to make women in the MSMEs/SMEs space, the most powerful driver of Her growth, Blackbox perfectly speaks to the Solution. Giving operational support at a low cost as well as empowering women with formal structure to access growth facilities.

It is equally important that the MSME/SMEs segment develops in all areas of agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors because each of these sectors will continue to be truly relevant to the overall GDP growth as well as employment generation. Women in MSME/SMEs sector act as a catalyst to bring about this expected socio-economic development in all ramifications. Blackbox gives an enabling platform for this.