Footprint to Africa

Lagos, Nigeria, March 11, 2016 (Newswire.com) - ​
Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, Chairman, Africa Centre for Business Development, Strategy and Innovation has said that he started the centre essentially because of his past work in the area of business development and advocacy, as past Chairman of Nigerian Economic Summit Group, Past President of Nigerian Employers Consultative Association and sometime the Chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria and also when he came to realise that the private sector needed a lot of support, motivation, exposure and a great need to provide information that will help to stimulate businesses that these different sectors do.
 

Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa made this statement in an exclusive interview with Footprint to Africa in Lagos, adding that “I also came to the conclusion that there is so much that the private sector can do if they had the appropriate support and I therefore decided that we  should create this platform to enable us to support enterprise development. As Chairman of Africa Centre for   Business Development, Strategy and Innovation we have spent a lot of effort in trying to organise the different focal group, the different stakeholder groups that we deal with.

The best thing for a Minister of Industry or Trade is not to sit down in the office. His job is out in the field He should to go from one shop to the other, one business to the other to find out how their businesses are growing

Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, Chairman, African Centre for Business Development, Strategy and Innovation

“I realised during my years in active work in management and leadership that there is so much information gap which Small and Medium Scale and even talk about Micro scale and medium enterprises do not have.”
 

Mazi Ohuabunwa lamented that many of the small, micro companies have no idea of funding and some of them when you talk about funding they have already made up their mind that these funding are not accessible and nobody could get them, hence the centre focused on creating knowledge.

“So we tried to kind of intermediate, first to bring the kind of information home through our seminars, workshops, one-on one interaction and through our mentoring programmes for them to understand that these opportunities exist and what does it take to access these opportunities and sometimes we have led them by hands to walk through the steps to accessing those funding, but not just about funding what about the market development in creating opportunities for their products and services to be well known and also to be positioned in the mind of consumers even to create awareness is exciting of course when you take them from where they are to where you think they ought to do, you see them blossom and you are comfortable.

“So we have done quite a lot and there is still a lot more to do because in this country today you have almost half a million Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country and it is easy for one or two or more organisations to reach all.We do adopt opportunities to expand the visibility of our operation so that many more can access the information that we produce and we put out,” he stressed.

According to him, the Centre has participated in different international fora and several other programmes outside the country and was able to interface, to share knowledge and be able to understand what has worked elsewhere and in our country.

“What we do is that we are bringing a lot more people to join us both in terms of providing resources, human and material resources so as to build capacities. Secondly, we are expanding our base for a long time we started working out of Lagos. We now have operations in Abuja and Port Harcourt and we are trying to extend to Enugu so that we can have a larger reach to the target audience. Then also through our collaboration in African countries we have a kind of outreach in Accra, Ghana, and we also have a relationship which we established in Kenya. So we are trying to expand within Nigeria and also bring in African affiliations because Africa is our space,” he said.

He highlighted that the Centre is looking at enterprise development, focusing on those things that can help companies grow, adding that they are focusing on environmental issues in the area of governmental inputs and also in the area of capacity especially of entrepreneurs to understand the rudiments of how to access the enablers that promote business.

“We are focusing more on enablers, looking at fundings, management, marketing, business conduct, because we believed that many businesses have failed because of these four things, either because of finance, marketing, management expertise or because of business conduct. We found that if we got these four right, the chances are that the businesses will grow. When you see a man setting up a small business that everybody should go around him and said what can we do for you, because this man that is setting up this small business will end up in employing one person and end up getting people to put electricity and start using services and employ one or two people. So as many more people will be setting up small, small thing the economy will become big, and that is a mentality thing first.

“I won't see someone setting SME somewhere and go and destroy his shop. If I destroy his shop I should create an alternative shop for him, because by destroying his shop without compensation I am driving him into an extreme behaviour that is resulting into the dislocation social of our milieu, people getting angry in our society. What we need to do is to first of all is to understand that when an individual want to do business we should offer him help and guidance.

“ If we have that mentality, I have spoken that the best thing for a Minister of Industry or trade is not to sit down in the office. His job is out in the field He should to go from one shop to the other, one business to the other to find out how their businesses are growing. You have employed 10 people this year what can I do for you to make you employ 20 people next year. The Minister should go from one sectoral group to another motivating them and offering them help. The moment we can do that Nigerians are entrepreneur by nature, what they need is guidance, support and motivation. That is my area of focus and not in telling us money is available and nobody can access the money, telling us things are happening and nobody is seeing them,” he noted.
 

Mazi Ohuabunwa advocated for mere attitudinal change to small businesses, creating of work stations, enterprise stations, estates where people can set up their businesses with minimal hassles regarding procurement of land, and all the other things that they need.

“Business bureaus where people can just walk in with their idea and a laptop and they can start running businesses. That is what I believe we need to do to unleash the energies that Nigerians have to do business,” he stated.

Footprint to Africa's exclusive interview with Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa may be viewed via this link: http://footprint2africa.com/15538-2/