By Abdul Aji.
Thousands of Nigerian micro, small, and medium businesses (MSMEs) are set to benefit from the free entrepreneurship programme being offered by the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) Plc.
The free entrepreneurship training is part of the DBN’s efforts toward achieving its core mandate of building the capacity of small businesses to enable them to formalize and upscale.
A statement from the DBN said the training “will address the challenges some of the SMEs face in accessing funding for their businesses”.
While speaking on the free DBN learning programme for MSMEs, DBN Managing Director, Anthony Okpanachi said, “as part of our plans to strengthen our catalytic role in the Nigerian economy, we are expanding our reach to MSMEs and inviting interested Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises to take advantage of our free Entrepreneurship Training Program to upscale their skills”.
The DBN, he said, “is investing a lot of resources in driving skill acquisition across the different aspects of managing and sustaining a successful businesses across sectors.’’
“MSMEs who take advantage of this opportunity will gain critical business skills that will pave the way for higher earnings, capacity, increased innovation, self-reliance, and most importantly, improve their ability to access funding for their businesses”, he added.
By the end of the online training session on 23rd September, 200 businesses would be selected for a physical session taking place from October 17 to 21, 2022 in Lagos and Abuja.
The training DBN said “will provide an opportunity for businesses to practically learn and apply important principles from online training to their various businesses. They will also have the opportunity to network and cross-sell their ideas with colleagues”.
Also, participants will be eligible to pitch their business ideas and value proposition to a carefully selected professional panel and successful pitches will be selected to receive grant funding to kick start their journey into the entrepreneurship space.
Participants are required to complete a minimum of four mandatory courses on the DBN BizAid Learning Management Platform and obtain an average score of 70 per cent to be eligible for the in-person classes in Abuja and Lagos.
The training will be held on the DBN Learning Management System (LMS), a free learning portal with carefully curated self-paced courses that are open to all Nigerian MSMEs who are interested in acquiring the right knowledge needed to succeed in business.
