Investing in women critical to development

Oluwaremi Lanre-Leke dazzles at any exhibition. Her products are new – simple household food items that millions of women know how to use. But her innovation is in packaging – neatly labelled plastics bags and bottles that easily catch the eye. When she started out as a one-woman entrepreneur, her biggest obstacle wasn’t finance. It […]

Oluwaremi Lanre-Leke dazzles at any exhibition. Her products are new – simple household food items that millions of women know how to use. But her innovation is in packaging – neatly labelled plastics bags and bottles that easily catch the eye.
When she started out as a one-woman entrepreneur, her biggest obstacle wasn’t finance. It was stiff rivalry and the red tape of regulatory standards. “The only challenge is the competition,” she says. And the competition is so stiff that even a little publicity is damaging. Once photos of her brand of home made pap appeared in a newspaper, the label came off the plastic bowls the pap came in and reappeared on bowls she swore didn’t come from her hands. Now she’s neck deep into regularising production, scaling up to big-time manufacturing and ensuring her products count in real economic terms. “I have to meet up, so my products can be acceptable on the open market and in shops,” she says.
Women likely outnumber men in micro economy. They form the“bulwark of operations in economic life,” says Chudi Ezirigwe, general manager of Abuja Enterprise Agency, self described as the FCT’s vehicle for wealth creation. From peasant farming, petty trading to pharmaceuticals, it is all about anything that brings about self reliance, he says.
“Because of their closeness or their role in the family, when the economic well being of the family is not in good shape, they are the ones most affected,” says Ezirigwe.“Naturally, they have the instinct to take the gauntlet to make sure food is on the table.” But food on the table does not always translate as sheer contribution to national gross domestic products.
Experts believe the contribution of women to the national economy is grossly underestimated because of a “general laxity in data capturing as a country,” according to Ezirigwe. So businesses like mama’s packaged home made shea butter falls outside the radar of economic statisticians.Women are fighting back to become entrepreneurs, even if they begin by employing only themselves, according to the Nigerian Employers Consultative Association. It puts up its Network of Entrepreneurial Women after it found it “didn’t have a lot of women sitting at the table,” according to the network’s chairperson, Ekaette Umoh. “The idea is to help women become bigger and better business people.” But that requires structure, scale, regulatory standards if such potentially large businesses will employ Nigerians.
Hundreds of women into production, packaging and mini-manufacturing have already signed up and are deep into networking to grow their business and command sizeable presence on the open market-or when they get on it.The standards are no problem. National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control  (NAFDAC)  has eased up registration procedures, even packing some of its work online, but getting physical inspection of production premises can still be difficult.Lanre-Leke still runs her production from her home and her shop in Abuja.
NAFDAC requires a four-room production outfit, but is yet to sign off on inspection even after she paid for registration. Her attempts to grow her business into the big league by getting a place for production at Idu industrial estate in Abuja stalled after she was presented facility bills for duplexes running to nearly N7 million, she says.
She retired to her in-shop production, which now employs five people – and depends on seminars and exhibitions to let the world know of her presence. In the absence of the regular, mini businesses are gradually dominating tuck shops, market stalls and the shopping plazas and malls in major cities.
“Typically, a woman’s business is very poor,” says Umoh, noting how reluctant they might be toward struggling against the bureaucracy of business regulation. Thoughts of dealing with the Central Bank, NAFDAC, CorporateAffairs Commission, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigerian Export Promotion Council make little businesses quiver.
“Some of the things people are afraid of are really not so,” says Umoh.
Ezirigwi says: “We are doing all we can to put women in positions of advantage against men, who are doing good, but I think women have the capacity to perform much better.”