The 8th meeting of Ecobank officials and those of the African Development Agency, AUDA-NEPAD took place on September 23. Promoting the development of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is the objective of the African Development Agency, Auda-Nepad. This 8th meeting brings together several African countries including Chad. Through this project, other African countries will also be reached.
“This is why Auda-Nepad initiated this to be inclusive enough taking into account the needs of market access capacity building and financing of all micro and medium enterprises. This is why the choice is made on it so that we can create national companies that can develop in the same way as foreign companies that come to our countries to do business ”, explains Alassane Sorgo, CEO of Ecobank.
In addition to this, the Agency intends to reach by the end of 2021, 1 million SMEs who will access this training platform to learn and understand their sector in order to learn about the opportunities that exist in the different markets. The CEO of Ecobank continues that, SMEs are sources of jobs for young people in this continent.
The coordinator of Aua-Nepad, Idriss Amine, adds that, “on the African continent, 90% of the economic fabric is made up of MSEs and they provide employment for the youth”.
The panelists did not fail to enumerate the difficulties of certain actors to present sufficiently credible projects and to offer guarantees of financing. It also emerges that some MEPs are in a business climate with high levels of debt and legal insecurity. To overcome the difficulties identified, the Ada-Nepad, in collaboration with other partners including the Ecobank group, will create an academy which aims to train this category of companies so that they can have the management capacity of SMEs. .
