Mrs Thelma Ekiyor-Solanke, Chairperson of the Nigeria Philanthropy Office (NPO), said eligible startups will receive grants ranging from N5 million to N10 million in the funding programme for MSMEs in targeted sectors.
Ekiyor-Solanke stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sideline of the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NPO and its first batch of partners on Monday in Abuja.
The MoU was geared towards providing funding for startups in the Agriculture, renewable energy , fashion and furniture manufacturing sectors.
Odu’a Investment Company Limited (OICL), Sahara Group Foundation and the Partnership Initiative for the Niger Delta (PIND) were among the organisations that signed MoUs with the NPO.
According to Ekiyor-Solanke , over 500 businesses from the targeted sectors have applied for the grant and the MoU signing was part of a roadmap towards ensuring the office fulfills its mandate.
“Eligible MSMEs will receive grants ranging from N5 million to N10 million and emphasis will be placed on supporting women-led businesses, constituting 50 per cent of the start-ups.
“We are pleased to have four leading organisations here today, our first batch of partnerships, doing different things, so that when each person brings what they are good at we get a whole.
“We hope that through this partnership we will be able to unlock skills and capacity-building advantages.
“After this, we hope it will encourage more and more people to partner with the government in this area because the high rate of unemployment has caused social problems and insecurity.
“The focus is startups in all the geopolitical zones, we will collaborate with different private sector partners to support startups,” she said.
Mr Tola Johnson, Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Job Creation and MSMEs, said the MoU was a milestone towards realising the mandate of the NPO as directed by the President.
Johnson, who is also the secretary of the NPO, called for commitment from all partners to ensure that the targeted sectors benefit from the presidential intervention for a better life for Nigerians.
“If you recall, we had this launch on Jan. 12, and we said that we were going to go out and look for credible partners to help us on this journey.
“So this is the first set of partners, and after this, we hope to extend it to the next set of MOUs, and the next step is to start seeing a skeletal process of implementation.
“I hope that with what has happened today, we have been able to begin a new way of getting things done between the Federal Government and the private sector.
“This is an indication that things can be done by both the government and private sector to get results if you have the right team,” he said.
NAN reports that NPO is a private-led coordinating office, situated in the Office of the Vice President to drive philanthropic support for MSMEs for targeted sectors that have high job creation potential.
The office is aligned with the job creation vision of Tinubu and the administration’s ongoing work with MSMEs in terms of job creation by working with donors, impact investors, financial institutions and foundations.
It is saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the establishment of 12 industrial value-chain hubs, and accelerators for startups and small businesses across the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria.
