ILO and Social Partners Validate Assessment Findings on women entrepreneurship

The International Labour Organisation ILO and its social partners on Tuesday validated the Assessment findings on identifying barriers and opportunities to formalise women-led small economics units and their workers in Nigeria.

It was a one-day workshop in Abuja that aimed at promoting gender equality and formalisation through women’s entrepreneurship development in Nigeria.

The ILO and its Social Partners while validating the findings, emphasised support to women entrepreneurs in the areas of registration of businesses and products as well as access to finance and capacity-building initiatives targeting women in the informal sector.

The Assessment examined enterprise formalisation barriers for women-owned enterprises in Nigeria, formalisation incentives for women-owned enterprises, agencies involved in the various steps of business formalization and the findings from primary data collection.

On the need for the assessment at a one-day national validation workshop where the assessment findings were presented by the consultants to participants, the Country Director of the ILO for Nigeria, Ghana, Serrie-Leone, Liberia and ECOWAS, Ms Vanessa Phala, said the research was commissioned to support the transition of women-led businesses from the informal sector to the formal sector to promote growth and development of their businesses and generate more decent and better – paying jobs for workers.

To do this she said, stakeholders in the sector must first understand what barriers are, as well as the opportunities.

“As we deliberate on the findings of this assessment, I encourage us to engage thoroughly and share our perspectives to enrich the discussion such as increasing awareness on formalization benefits and incentives; adaptation of (registration) services to women and informal sector entrepreneurs in terms of user-friendly websites and overall dependence on ICT.

 “The consultants and ILO technical experts are here to clarify, receive your feedback and comments and generally support this validation workshop”.

Ms Phala called for what she described as workable and implementable outcomes from the workshop.

“I want to underscore the importance of the ILO Recommendation No 204 of 2015 on the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy calls on member states to design coherent and integrated strategies to facilitate the transition from the informal to the formal economy and recognise the need for tailored approaches to address the diversity of situations and the specificity of national circumstances.

“I hope that the results of this assessment will lead to actions that are aimed at addressing the identified challenges and optimising the opportunities that formalisation brings”, the ILO Country Director said.

In a message, the Director, of Employment and Wages in the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment represented by Mrs Augustina Uka, said that the Ministry is committed to ensuring gender-responsive policies, advocacies and efforts supported at Women’s entrepreneurship development as it works together with the ILO and other Social Partners to ensure the success of the project.

In a goodwill message, the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association NECA, said that the issue of women’s economic empowerment through entrepreneurship was increasingly being recognised as significant to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs and contributing significantly to the GDP of a nation.

Unfortunately according to Mrs Adenike Adebayo-Ajala, a Deputy Director in NECA who represented the organisation at the event, “women entrepreneurship in developing countries such as Nigeria, is characterised by an over-representation in the informal economy and exposure to high levels of gender disparity”.

In participant’s response to the workshop, the ILO Programme Lead, Promoting Gender Equality and Formalisation through Women’s Entrepreneurship Development in Nigeria, Mrs Uche Hilary-Ogbonna, said they were excited to be part of history-making as far as the issue of women’s economic empowerment is concerned.

Participants also responded by expressing appreciation to the ILO, market women and other respondents to the survey and called on the government to incentivize formalization while taking concrete actions to implement the Assessment Findings.

The survey carried out in Lagos and Rivers States in South-west and South-south Nigeria, identified access to finance, ownership of market stalls, formal business registration with relevant authorities, as well as cultural, constraints impeding women to attain their full potential in businesses.

Among the many recommendations which were validated at the workshop, is the need to create awareness about the necessity of formalization and formalization process and creating one stop-shops housing all relevant agencies involved in the formalization process nationwide to encourage business formalization among women entrepreneurs and reduce the processing time.

There were goodwill messages from the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria SMEDAN, the Nigeria Labour Congress NLC, NECA’s Network of Entrepreneurial Women NEW and the Trade Union Congress TUC among others.

Dominica Nwabufo