Women have been urged to add value to their products in order to get more income. The advice was given by a business development consultant, Margret Joshua, at a business roundtable organised for women by the Global Centre for Human Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Development (GLOCEED) in Abuja recently.
“Value addition brings in more income for women and it helps to sustain their business. We don’t want the women to remain at the level they are. We want to ensure they grow. We don’t want them to remain as micro forever.
“We have to grow to be small, medium and big players in different industries. We believe that these women have what it takes and they just need to be determined to make it work,” she said.
The Director General of GLOCEED and National Coordinator Association of Women in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Mrs Rose Gyar, said when women understand that they need to package their products well, that will help them compete well in the market.
“The women have been able to understand what they have been doing which should not have been because there are new ways of thinking which can help them key into global best practices,” Gyar further said.
One of the participants, Peace Ohamaku, who is a cassava farmer from Bayelsa shared her experience thus:
“They taught us how to move our products to another level by adding value to the products. We were taught how we can add value to cassava, package it and then export it. I am into cassava farming and we are trying to see how we can produce ‘Bayelsa Garri’ which we can export,” she said.
Another participant, Mrs G. Eta, said the forum afforded her the opportunity to get information on government initiatives that will help her find her feet.
“I got information on how to access finance, the market and how to ensure I can sustain my business. For instance, the Bank of Industry (BOI) was on hand to give us more information on the GEEP project, which is available for micro industries.
“Then, we had the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and other agencies that explained things about packaging in order to have access to a wider market, and how to sustain and retain the access,” she said.
