The Director General/Chief Executive Officer of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) Mr. Charles Odii has stated that Nigeria lost around three million small businesses due to environmental factors like flooding in the past few years.
The CEO stated this during a panel discussion titled “Sustainable Business Growth in a Challenging Macro Economic Environment” organised by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Lagos.
According to him, states like Kogi and Benue which were ravaged by severe floods were the most casualties in the epidemic of death of small businesses.
- He stated, “Upon assumption in office, we looked at the data and one of the things that we want to do is be driven by data and we saw that we lost about three million small businesses in Nigeria. They used to be about 42 million. And they had to do with environmental factors especially flooding in Benue and Kogi state”
He further noted that the agency will be launching a department that helps with sustainability framework for small businesses.
Specifically, he mentioned the aspect of alternative energy sources that leaves less carbon footprints on the environment.
Sustainability initiatives for MSMEs
He noted that agency has started the program in the Wuse market cluster in Abuja where they encouraged traders to pivot from using petrol generators to solar panels and batteries which was better in terms of cost and on the environment.
Additionally, the SMEDAN boss noted that the agency plans to scale the initiative to include building green cities for light manufacturing for small businesses through partnerships with the state governments where some of them have already provided land for the initiatives.
What you should know
According to a 2017 study by the National Bureau of Statistics, there were 41.5 million MSMEs in Nigeria employing almost sixty million people. These businesses constitute around 46.31% of GDP and about 96% of total businesses in Nigeria.
In 2022, Nigeria witnessed severed flooding occasioned by the opening of the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon with states like Benue, Kogi and Anambra, Bayelsa the epicentre.
A report by the NBS in conjunction with the World Bank estimated that between $3.79 billion and $9.12 billion was lost to the floods.
