October 2016
- Marking the 16th Anniversary of the Growing Businesses Foundation and honoring all the Corporates and Individuals whose contributions and work have sustained her vision. Thank YOU! -
The Growing Businesses Foundation (GBF) was founded in 1999 with a mission to promote "Sustainable Economic Development led by Socially Responsible Businesses and Individuals." In January 2016, following the 70th United Nations General Assembly recently concluded, the term Sustainability becomes mainstream in corporate vocabulary, much like Microfinance and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) did in Nigeria in the decade following GBF's birth.
The contradiction of the now 'mainstream' practice of Microfinance and CSR is that we still live with embarrassingly high levels of human poverty, greed and attendant inequity, in a country of plenty. This is in spite of the fact that micro-entrepreneurs, especially women at the base of the pyramid, have proven time and again that they are creditworthy and entrepreneurial, especially at the community level where it is not commercially efficient for large corporates to operate. The principle of outsourcing work in the local communities to deserving entrepreneurs is an area we must explore more! As a case in point, the Unilever initiative to develop a new Sales Channel piloted 2015 with GBF in Oyo State as 'Gbemiga', is a case in point.
Over the last year, GBF and Unilever have empowered 1000 women across the 4 states of Oyo, Ogun, Enugu and Imo State with loans and inventory to enable the sale of health-relevant fast moving consumer goods. These enterprising women, whose business savvy has increased through the GBF training programs, and Unilever-GBF disbursed loans, boost their economic potential and maintain a positive track record in savings and loans repayment. Their potential to emerge as change agents within their local communities is visibly enhanced and more importantly their disposable income allows for children's education and households to be more adequately financed. As such, in my humble opinion, programs which go beyond CSR to building a business case for community owned businesses and an incentive for large corporates to finance micro and small businesses is what works in the long term. This is what GBF has long referred to as Corporate Sustainability and Response-ability (CSR*).
Corporate Sustainability and Response-ability (CSR*) is the subject matter I intend to blog about.
However I cannot end this courageous Statement of Intent (to blog monthly) without referring to those social entrepreneurs who have invested their lives building out the social infrastructure and framework to sustainably empower community based businesses and micro-enterpreneurs. I cannot mention them all but I will refer to a few: Deacon Oladokun, in the year 2000, requested and received a N1million Naira seed capital loan from the Growing Businesses Foundation (GBF) and N20million in subsequent years. His organization, SEAP, has since developed a network of 450,000 entrepreneurs receiving loans and depositing savings approximating N9billion ($40m) and recording repayments rates of about 98% over a 15 year period. he still is unable to attract adequate affordable capital from the mainstream financial sector. My mind wanders to Felicia Nnajiofor who received a $150 loan from GBF in the year 2000 and was so inspired by the prospect of empowering other women that she obtained sequential loans from GBF of N10m ($45,000) to empower a network of women in her region. She now runs a network of 10,000 women across the South-East! Also worthy of mention are the hardworking entrepreneurs like Edith, who in 2002 received an initial GBF-MTN loan of N35,000 ($159) under the Ogene Rural Telephone Project and eventually grew her business to achieve an annual turnover approximating N200million ($900,000)... There are so many such success stories! Such is the potential at the "Bottom' of the Pyramid. It is real.
The role of the Government in enabling this evolution and growth for the micro-finance sector has been critical. This will be even more so as we refine the policy framework which will serve as a catalyst to harnessing the potential opportunities of the 'financial inclusion' agenda for ALL Nigerians. Time and again, I have witnessed how critical it is to have a regulator that is open to listen to the private sector and consider the rights and needs of the 'ordinary' Nigerian citizen. The CBN has not been afraid to amend mistakes and continue to adapt and adopt new ideas that better suit the needs of the dynamically evolving and innovation-driven and enterprise-ful Nigerian economy. This collaborative approach and mindset will be especially critical in this present era.
GBF with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the support of Citi, has since 2007 organized the Micro-entrepreneurship and SME Awards. This annual forum has become the single largest annual gathering of actors in the financial inclusion space across Nigeria. This has proved a very useful forum for Policy Reform and Advocacy, particularly given it is an annual convergence point for Microfinance Practitioners, SMEs, the Banking Sector and Senior Government Officials including the Presidency. We have come a long way! I do recall the challenges GBF faced when intermediating the first commercial credit between the informal sector (Lift Above Poverty Organization) and the formal Banking Sector (United Bank for Africa) in 2001/2 which 100% repayment track record opened the way, with greater confidence, for new capital inflows from the formal financial sector to the informal financial sector. At the time micro-finance intermediaries were largely savings-funded (rarely development finance supported, and certainly never bank-financed) non-profit non-governmental organizations. Many of these NGOs have since initiated profitable and viable Microfinance Banks, including LAPO, SEAP, DEC and UPMFB and the financial viability of investments in the Microfinance Sector have been further proven by for-profit global players including AB Microfinance Bank and Accion whose entry in Nigeria was exclusively to finance businesses at the Bottom of the Pyramid. This further supports, in my mind, the case for Sustainable Inclusive Growth Models.
The financial resources available to the Bottom of the Pyramid have significantly increased since GBF's inception in 1999 however Nigeria's community owned businesses still have insufficient access to financial resources and know-how, and as a country we therefore remain far behind on the Human Development Index. This should be a concern for all of us. High unemployment rates, dilapidating educational infrastructure and insufficient access to affordable capital coupled with a teeming and restive youth population amounts to nothing less than a monumental National Security Risk waiting to unleash itself upon an apparently still slumbering Giant.
I would like to own up to the fact that this article is entirely based on my personal opinion and subjective experiences, and documented unapologetically as such. This is my blog, and I have written my first entry on the spur of the moment. This is not a well-researched piece of work and it is definitely not intended as a long-deliberated and balanced article either. I write from the heart, which is how I speak, and my intent is to raise questions and, above all, perhaps to spur my own further action in advocating for the Bottom of Pyramid - especially for those with no seat at the negotiating table, and who often are the most affected by whatsoever is decided upon. The appeal of a blog for me is that I can write in my 'stream of consciousness style', and though for myself we live in a global glasshouse where nothing is ever hidden for long. So what I set out to do today, on this first day of my monthly blog to mark the 16th Anniversary of GBF, is to exhale. I am not citing footnote-accentuated statistics today, other than those personally witnessed as part of the growth and evolution process of GBF. I write merely to join my voice to many others advocating for greater efficiencies in financing and supporting the Bottom of the Pyramid, most especially women who hold the local economies together by their sheer commitment, enterprise, ingenuity, innovation and hard work. Without these women, especially the mothers among them, the moral fabric of our society would be far less tenable and our youth much more restive.
For this reason, alongside GBF I celebrate our womenfolk at the Bottom of the Pyramid. It is they who have inspired me over the years to maintain my singular commitment to the Growing Businesses Foundation, however much of a struggle this journey has been. I celebrate the GBF team whose work is driven by their blind passion and commitment to the cause of the multitudes of underserved and unserved Nigerians who, given a chance, could do so much more to inspire inclusive growth and sustainable development in our beloved nation Nigeria. Our women and youth on the periphery of society, where innovation takes root long before the mainstream realizes it (Nollywood is a case in point!), are not waiting for 'help' and they certainly are not 'poor' in spirit. They long understood, and taught me, that our dignity is best upheld by the principle of starting small, and the practice of self-help and mutual empathy - as visibly embodied in our traditional extended family structures that have long held our society in balance - as the best guarantees for sustainable development and peace.
Sincerely yours,
Ndidi
Dr Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien
n.nnoliedozien@gmail.com
- Marking the 16th Anniversary of the Growing Businesses Foundation and honoring all the Corporates and Individuals whose contributions and work have sustained her vision. Thank YOU! -
The Growing Businesses Foundation (GBF) was founded in 1999 with a mission to promote "Sustainable Economic Development led by Socially Responsible Businesses and Individuals." In January 2016, following the 70th United Nations General Assembly recently concluded, the term Sustainability becomes mainstream in corporate vocabulary, much like Microfinance and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) did in Nigeria in the decade following GBF's birth.
The contradiction of the now 'mainstream' practice of Microfinance and CSR is that we still live with embarrassingly high levels of human poverty, greed and attendant inequity, in a country of plenty. This is in spite of the fact that micro-entrepreneurs, especially women at the base of the pyramid, have proven time and again that they are creditworthy and entrepreneurial, especially at the community level where it is not commercially efficient for large corporates to operate. The principle of outsourcing work in the local communities to deserving entrepreneurs is an area we must explore more! As a case in point, the Unilever initiative to develop a new Sales Channel piloted 2015 with GBF in Oyo State as 'Gbemiga', is a case in point.
Over the last year, GBF and Unilever have empowered 1000 women across the 4 states of Oyo, Ogun, Enugu and Imo State with loans and inventory to enable the sale of health-relevant fast moving consumer goods. These enterprising women, whose business savvy has increased through the GBF training programs, and Unilever-GBF disbursed loans, boost their economic potential and maintain a positive track record in savings and loans repayment. Their potential to emerge as change agents within their local communities is visibly enhanced and more importantly their disposable income allows for children's education and households to be more adequately financed. As such, in my humble opinion, programs which go beyond CSR to building a business case for community owned businesses and an incentive for large corporates to finance micro and small businesses is what works in the long term. This is what GBF has long referred to as Corporate Sustainability and Response-ability (CSR*).
Corporate Sustainability and Response-ability (CSR*) is the subject matter I intend to blog about.
However I cannot end this courageous Statement of Intent (to blog monthly) without referring to those social entrepreneurs who have invested their lives building out the social infrastructure and framework to sustainably empower community based businesses and micro-enterpreneurs. I cannot mention them all but I will refer to a few: Deacon Oladokun, in the year 2000, requested and received a N1million Naira seed capital loan from the Growing Businesses Foundation (GBF) and N20million in subsequent years. His organization, SEAP, has since developed a network of 450,000 entrepreneurs receiving loans and depositing savings approximating N9billion ($40m) and recording repayments rates of about 98% over a 15 year period. he still is unable to attract adequate affordable capital from the mainstream financial sector. My mind wanders to Felicia Nnajiofor who received a $150 loan from GBF in the year 2000 and was so inspired by the prospect of empowering other women that she obtained sequential loans from GBF of N10m ($45,000) to empower a network of women in her region. She now runs a network of 10,000 women across the South-East! Also worthy of mention are the hardworking entrepreneurs like Edith, who in 2002 received an initial GBF-MTN loan of N35,000 ($159) under the Ogene Rural Telephone Project and eventually grew her business to achieve an annual turnover approximating N200million ($900,000)... There are so many such success stories! Such is the potential at the "Bottom' of the Pyramid. It is real.
The role of the Government in enabling this evolution and growth for the micro-finance sector has been critical. This will be even more so as we refine the policy framework which will serve as a catalyst to harnessing the potential opportunities of the 'financial inclusion' agenda for ALL Nigerians. Time and again, I have witnessed how critical it is to have a regulator that is open to listen to the private sector and consider the rights and needs of the 'ordinary' Nigerian citizen. The CBN has not been afraid to amend mistakes and continue to adapt and adopt new ideas that better suit the needs of the dynamically evolving and innovation-driven and enterprise-ful Nigerian economy. This collaborative approach and mindset will be especially critical in this present era.
GBF with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the support of Citi, has since 2007 organized the Micro-entrepreneurship and SME Awards. This annual forum has become the single largest annual gathering of actors in the financial inclusion space across Nigeria. This has proved a very useful forum for Policy Reform and Advocacy, particularly given it is an annual convergence point for Microfinance Practitioners, SMEs, the Banking Sector and Senior Government Officials including the Presidency. We have come a long way! I do recall the challenges GBF faced when intermediating the first commercial credit between the informal sector (Lift Above Poverty Organization) and the formal Banking Sector (United Bank for Africa) in 2001/2 which 100% repayment track record opened the way, with greater confidence, for new capital inflows from the formal financial sector to the informal financial sector. At the time micro-finance intermediaries were largely savings-funded (rarely development finance supported, and certainly never bank-financed) non-profit non-governmental organizations. Many of these NGOs have since initiated profitable and viable Microfinance Banks, including LAPO, SEAP, DEC and UPMFB and the financial viability of investments in the Microfinance Sector have been further proven by for-profit global players including AB Microfinance Bank and Accion whose entry in Nigeria was exclusively to finance businesses at the Bottom of the Pyramid. This further supports, in my mind, the case for Sustainable Inclusive Growth Models.
The financial resources available to the Bottom of the Pyramid have significantly increased since GBF's inception in 1999 however Nigeria's community owned businesses still have insufficient access to financial resources and know-how, and as a country we therefore remain far behind on the Human Development Index. This should be a concern for all of us. High unemployment rates, dilapidating educational infrastructure and insufficient access to affordable capital coupled with a teeming and restive youth population amounts to nothing less than a monumental National Security Risk waiting to unleash itself upon an apparently still slumbering Giant.
I would like to own up to the fact that this article is entirely based on my personal opinion and subjective experiences, and documented unapologetically as such. This is my blog, and I have written my first entry on the spur of the moment. This is not a well-researched piece of work and it is definitely not intended as a long-deliberated and balanced article either. I write from the heart, which is how I speak, and my intent is to raise questions and, above all, perhaps to spur my own further action in advocating for the Bottom of Pyramid - especially for those with no seat at the negotiating table, and who often are the most affected by whatsoever is decided upon. The appeal of a blog for me is that I can write in my 'stream of consciousness style', and though for myself we live in a global glasshouse where nothing is ever hidden for long. So what I set out to do today, on this first day of my monthly blog to mark the 16th Anniversary of GBF, is to exhale. I am not citing footnote-accentuated statistics today, other than those personally witnessed as part of the growth and evolution process of GBF. I write merely to join my voice to many others advocating for greater efficiencies in financing and supporting the Bottom of the Pyramid, most especially women who hold the local economies together by their sheer commitment, enterprise, ingenuity, innovation and hard work. Without these women, especially the mothers among them, the moral fabric of our society would be far less tenable and our youth much more restive.
For this reason, alongside GBF I celebrate our womenfolk at the Bottom of the Pyramid. It is they who have inspired me over the years to maintain my singular commitment to the Growing Businesses Foundation, however much of a struggle this journey has been. I celebrate the GBF team whose work is driven by their blind passion and commitment to the cause of the multitudes of underserved and unserved Nigerians who, given a chance, could do so much more to inspire inclusive growth and sustainable development in our beloved nation Nigeria. Our women and youth on the periphery of society, where innovation takes root long before the mainstream realizes it (Nollywood is a case in point!), are not waiting for 'help' and they certainly are not 'poor' in spirit. They long understood, and taught me, that our dignity is best upheld by the principle of starting small, and the practice of self-help and mutual empathy - as visibly embodied in our traditional extended family structures that have long held our society in balance - as the best guarantees for sustainable development and peace.
Sincerely yours,
Ndidi
Dr Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien
n.nnoliedozien@gmail.com
