MTNF, BOI Partners To Drive Youth Entrepreneurship
MTN Foundation in partnership with the Bank of Industry (BoI) have announced plans including scholarship and loan facility to drive youth entrepreneurship in Nigeria.
Indeed, the Foundation stated that more is coming on the heels of its scholarship scheme through which it had sponsored over 10,000 youths, explaining that it is not enough to sponsor youths through school, but making these youths self-reliant.
The Executive Secretary, MTN Foundation, Corporate Services, Odunayo Sanya, at a business pitch competition organized by MTNF, said loans up to N2 million repayable over a period of 36 months and a six-month moratorium is available under its youth entrepreneurship programme.
In her words, “We are here because of the youth entrepreneurship programme and as you know, MTN is committed to the growth of Nigerians. We have this scholarship scheme at the foundation every year where we have sponsored over 10000 people through, but we have decided that it is enough to sponsor them through school, but also enable them to become who they want to be, so that is the idea behind the youth entrepreneurship development programme and we are taking our alumni, people who have benefitted from the scholarship backing their ideas up with something tangible in partnership with the Bank of Industry (BoI). So we are partnering with the best to also give our own scholars the very best.”
According to her, 10 per cent of the loan is actually a grant while they repay the loan at a single-digit interest rate of 5 per cent.
“I think the idea behind the payback is to institutionalize accountability so that people can take responsibility and actually grow themselves. This year we have decided to turn it up for the whole of Nigeria, we are targeting agriculture, ICT, energy, education, fashion and beauty,” she added.
Also speaking at the event, Head of SME Fund, BOI, Michael Oye, said the fund is targeted at young entrepreneurs that are into value addition such as ICT, Fashion and all sort of industries creating value for the Nigerian economy.
“We are providing a lot of support in terms of management, markets and access to funds to all the participants to ensure the programme is sustainable. We are not just giving them the funds, but giving them the technical support to grow from micro to small and very big enterprises,” he said.
“On a regional and national basis, we have a lot of programmes to empower the youths. Our Graduate Entrepreneurship Fund (GEF) and Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES) programmes are not dead and we are still going to scale up going forward while also making our platform available for others to partner,” he said.
A participant, Munira Ojotu, said her dream is about to get turned up by MTN Foundation, adding that those participants went through a four-week online course on business management administered by the Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC) of the Pan African University
“The training has helped me understand the things to put together to help my business grow better. It has been amazing so far and I hope to have many more amazing times with MTN Foundation.
I like that we have been mentored, I also like that we have been taught how to run businesses. We have online classes, we have had mentorship and all these put together is enough to make everyone who is part of this programme to be successful and to me that is the real big deal,” she said.
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