Operationalising Financing Windows for Entrepreneurship Development in Nigeria: An Appraisal

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been seen as a linchpin for economic development, employment generation, citizen empowerment and wealth creation all over the world. More importantly, entrepreneurship development has been conceived as an instrument to suppress major avatars of poverty and socioeconomic deprivations among Nigerian citizens and for engendering social cohesion. However, harnessing the foregoing benefits has been hamstrung by lack of access to or inadequate supply of entrepreneurial finance. In addition to blistering ecological forces such as spotty power supply, an inept and unorganised political leadership that is irresponsible and irresponsive to the plight of the people, polygonal political corruption, putrefied or inadequate basic infrastructure like roads, among others, lack of SME finance has remained a minatory albatross to entrepreneurship development in the country. This paper, therefore, examined extant SME funding windows in Nigeria, identified their challenges and proffered solutions, while generally suggesting ways to operationalise both existing and neoteric funding options to enable entrepreneurship development happen in Nigeria.

Keywords: Operationalising; Entrepreneurship Development; Entrepreneurial Finance; SMEs; Ecological Forces.