The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) are set to inject N6 billion into the Nigerian economy through free registration of youth businesses.
The joint initiative, launched a few weeks ago, aims to register 250,000 youth-led businesses, create thousands of jobs, and help young entrepreneurs formalize and grow their ventures.
Registrar-General of CAC, Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, SAN, highlighted the economic impact while receiving members of the Association of Northern Nigerian Students (ANNS) in Kaduna, according to a statement posted on the commission’s X account. He noted that the program targets youths in content creation and other small enterprises, helping them contribute to economic growth.
“The Registrar-General/CEO of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Hussaini Ishaq Magaji, SAN, has advised Nigerian youths to leverage the Federal Government’s free 250,000 business names registration to formalise their businesses.
“Hussaini Ishaq Magaji made the call in Kaduna while receiving members of the Association of Northern Nigerian Students (ANNS) on a courtesy call. He maintained that by the gesture, the CAC was injecting 6 billion naira into the economy and creating 250,000 jobs mostly for Nigerian youths in order to curb unemployment,” the statement read in part.
Magaji urged the students to encourage their members to register businesses under the initiative, a joint effort by CAC and SMEDAN aimed at strengthening MSMEs and reducing youth unemployment.
The program is one of several initiatives by the Federal Government to support youth entrepreneurship and formalize informal businesses.
What you should know
While this initiative seeks to register 250,000 businesses for free, CAC is also deploying an Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent to tackle a backlog of 7,000 company registration applications and reduce service delays.
The AI agent, revealed by Magaji during a stakeholders’ forum in Kano, will handle requests across compliance, registry, and customer service functions, improving speed and accuracy in approvals.
- CAC has acknowledged teething problems with its AI-driven portal, which has slowed services for applications outside the first phase of deployment. The delays were largely due to the high volume of applications and inquiries, including over 3,000 emails received daily.
- The AI tool will read and comprehend emails within a minute, detect duplicates, and reroute messages to appropriate departments for faster resolution.
In June, CAC launched an AI-powered registration portal to simplify company registration, offer instant name approvals, and suggest alternatives when preferred names are unavailable. Despite occasional glitches, including payment and document submission issues, the portal now processes over 11,000 transactions daily.
