One of the major challenges many Nigerian female entrepreneurs are facing is access to funding and business skills, limiting their ability to establish, sustain and expand their businesses.
This was the case for Chisimdi Onyeakaruru who described herself as a multidisciplinary professional. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in English Studies and Industrial Physics. Despite her academic qualifications and the subsequent skills she learnt, she didn’t feel fulfilled. The search for self-discovery and purpose led her into entrepreneurship.
For her, business came naturally to her as it runs in the family. This vast approach to life helped her gain enough knowledge in ICT, after attending the MTN ICT and Business Skills training in 2019, where she emerged as the overall best candidate.
She later streamlined her business to cybersecurity but funding was always the biggest barrier to running her business. The challenge pushed her to apply for the maiden edition of the MTN Y’ellopreneur Initiative 1.0 in 2022.
Y’ellopreneur Training
According to Chisimdi, one significant business lesson she learnt from Y’ellopreneur training stemmed from the array of courses, from operations to marketing and finance.
She said; “Operations management course stood out for me. It helped me a lot because at that time I was running a business but didn’t know how to arrange its operation and the rest of it. So, operations management helped me restructure my business. I started gaining ideas on how to brand it better, which was not what I was doing. Earlier, I was just doing the normal self-employed business until the programme. It changed my perception.”
Buoyed by the intellectual growth she experienced during the first cohort, she applied again seven years later and got into the 2026 MTN Y’ellopreneur 3.0.
“I knew they were going to introduce something special and they introduced the Learn From Me. Learn From Me is extraordinary because they brought business owners who are thriving in their business. They told us about the struggles and realities of doing business in Nigeria and how they navigated it. That was the turning point for me,” Chisimdi explained.
MTN Foundation
The MTN Foundation was established in 2004 and served as MTN Nigeria Communications’ investment arm, dedicated to driving sustainable development and improving lives across Nigeria.
For the past two decades and counting, the Foundation has invested N34 billion in projects across the 36 states of the country, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). This was achieved by impacting over 32 million lives in 3,500 communities and 590 local government areas. It also hopes to reach the 600 mark by the end of 2026 due to ongoing projects. In the meantime, it already has 54 unique projects implemented across the country.
Focus Areas
The Foundation, which is solely funded by MTN Nigeria, is anchored on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and focused on key areas of Youth Development and National Priority.
Some of its initiatives include; the Y’ellopreneur Initiative, Y’ello Doctor Project, Community Development Initiative, Scholarship Schemes, MTNF-MUSON Music Scholars Programme and Youth Skills Development Project, among many others.
The Executive Director of MTN Foundation, Odunayo Sanya, said; “For everything we do, we advertise for a call for an application and a call for nomination if you’re to nominate a community. And that helps us with transparency and accountability. The only thing we don’t call for applications is the Top Ten UTME. It’s either you’re in the top 10 or not.”
To ensure even distribution of these initiatives across the six geopolitical zones of the country, Odunayo said; “We have a policy in the Foundation. If we’ve been to a community before, we don’t go back there, no matter how many people nominate that community, we’re not going to go back there. We rather go somewhere else. Then, when we’ve gone full circle, we can then start repeating and going back to areas where we have gone to.”
Y’ellopreneur Initiative
Y’ellopreneur is a gender-based economic empowerment and capacity-building programme for female entrepreneurs, which enables women in business to earn and do better.
Sanya said; “We don’t do everything. We limit what we do to businesses that are in the real economy; manufacturing, processing, circular economy, ICT, fashion, etc. There’s a list of businesses that we support.”
When the initiative started, the seed loan was N2 million and was subsequently increased to N3 million. But in 2026, the MTN Foundation signed an MoU with the Bank of Industry for a Matching Funds Mechanism, whereby 150 women are able to access N5 million. These women will then receive 25 per cent of the money as a grant after they’ve made a down payment on the loan.
“It’s not about the interest rate, that’s not what we want to do. It’s about accountability and discipline to ensure that the women go through and they pay back and then another woman has access to the funds. They have six months’ moratorium, so you’re not paying back until six months after and then you have another 36 months to complete the loan. No financial institution does that in Nigeria,” Sanya explained further.
Achievement
After completing the Y’ellopreneur programme, Chisimdi has, in turn, empowered women and girls through her tech-based business.
Students sell airtime and data from her site and earn at least N5,000 a day, which helps them pay for handouts and help family women make daily income. She currently has at least 58 vendors and APIs.
