Odu’a Investment Company Ltd (OICL) and the Nigerian Office for Philanthropy and Impact Investing has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) towards the provision of grants for MSMEs in the South-West zone.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the MoU was signed by officials of both organisations at the Philanthropy Office on Monday in Abuja.
The MoU is geared towards providing funding for startups to develop and grow businesses in critical sectors, including Agriculture, renewable energy , fashion and furniture manufacturing.
It intends to ensure parties work together towards providing funding for businesses in the six south-west states to spur socio-economic growth of the region for enhanced contribution to national economy.
Mrs Thelma Ekiyor-Solanke, Chairperson of the Philantropy Office, said the MoU was part of roadmap towards ensuring the office fulfill its mandate by working with relevant stakeholders.
“We are pleased to work with our first batch of partners, doing different things, so that when each person brings what they are good at we get a whole.
“We hope that through this partnership we will be able to unlock skills and capacity-building advantages.
“After this, we hope it will encourage more and more people to partner with the government in this area because the high rate of unemployment has caused social problems and insecurity
“The focus is startups in all the geopolitical zones, we will collaborate with different private sector partners to supporting startups,” she said.
Mr Abdulrahaman Yinusa, Group Managing Director/CEO, Odua Investments, who signed on behalf of the group, said the execution of the MOU was very important to achieve “impact investing” in the region.
“We see economic development as an essential combination between meeting statistics and also achieving social goals. So, this partnership is supposed to give us an opportunity to actually have what we call impact investing.
“In impact investing, you want to go beyond the profit and loss, and go into how much people are getting employed and how sustainable are the developments.
“This partnership is supposed to help us to go beyond making money to also been able to get jobs for our people and also look after the environment.
“ You will recall that Odua is owned by six South Western states, so first thing we are going to do is to create a platform whereby we will be able to engage all the economic agents within the South West.
“This will enable us to participate in activities that will not only grow the economy, but will also create jobs for our people,” he said.
Earlier in his remarks, Mr Tola Johnson, Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Job Creation and MSMEs, said the MoU was a milestone towards realising the president’s commitment to job creation.
He, therefore, called for commitment from all partners to ensure that the targeted sectors benefit from the presidential intervention for a better life for Nigerians.
NAN reports that the Nigeria Philanthropy Office (NPO) is a private-led coordinating office, situated in the Office of the Vice President to drive philanthropic support for MSMEs for targeted sectors that have high job creation potential.
The Office is aligned with the job creation vision of President Tinubu and the administration’s ongoing work with MSMEs in terms of job creation by working with donors, impact investors, financial institutions and foundations.