WorldStage– The North Central Development Commission (NCDC) has announced plans to partner with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) to promote entrepreneurship and industrial growth in the North Central region.
This is contained in a statement by Mr James Uloko, Executive Director, Corporate Services at the Commission, and made available to newsmen on Wednesday in Lafia.
According to the statement, Dr Cyril Tsenyil, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NCDC, disclosed this during a courtesy visit to SMEDAN Headquarters in Abuja.
Tsenyil, who led the NCDC management team on the visit, said that the engagement was aimed at exploring areas of collaboration through which the newly established Commission could leverage SMEDAN’s experience and institutional capacity to harness the region’s vast human and material resources.
He said that the collaboration would help tackle unemployment, poverty, and youth restiveness across the zone.
The NCDC boss identified inadequate power supply, limited access to finance, low human capital development, and weak organisational structures as major challenges confronting entrepreneurs in the region.
He added that the Commission would work with SMEDAN to proffer sustainable solutions.
Responding, Mr Charles Odii, SMEDAN’s Director-General, expressed the agency’s readiness to collaborate with NCDC through existing and new initiatives.
Odii listed some of SMEDAN’s programmes that could serve as platforms for partnership to include cluster entrepreneurship projects, industrial development centres, and enterprise talent hunts.
Others, he said, are specialised skills acquisition schemes, agribusiness extension services, opportunity fairs, and apprenticeship development programmes.
He assured the NCDC team that SMEDAN would designate officers to work closely with the Commission to strengthen the partnership for the benefit of the North Central region and Nigeria in general.
The visit also featured a guided tour of some cluster development facilities within the SMEDAN premises.
