$50m For Nigerians, But To Share Of It, You Must..

$50 million is up to N50billion, and that is not a small amount of money that has been made available to support Nigeria.

The gesture which is coming off a credit agreement between the African Development Bank (AfDB) and First City Monument Bank (FCMB) is to support women empowered businesses and Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

If well managed, these will touch hundreds of businesses directly or indirectly, thereby helping to fight the prevailing hunger and poverty in the country.

For this to happen however, the $50 million support must be well administered.

And also, beneficiaries have to be businesses, so that it could be used to create more income generating businesses and outlets to support more Nigerians.

Report says the FCMB woud use the proceeds of the Line of Credit to finance SMEs and Women in Businesses (WEBs) in the areas of agribusiness, manufacturing, healthcare and renewable energy sectors.

It is targeted as ameliorating the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses.

The AfDB will partner with FCMB through a technical assistance grant of $200,000 sourced from the Women Entrepreneurship Finance Initiative (WeFi) under its Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative.

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FCMB will deploy the grant resources to provide non-financial services, including training and strengthening of its monitoring and reporting functions for WEBs, the report added.