Financial services are waking up to the potential of Gen Y consumers. Millennials may not have a lot of money now, but they are determined to pay down their debt and conserve resources for the future. Coming of age in an era of massive financial uncertainty, they may even come to be known as “Gen Frugal”.
That’s good news for community banks and credit unions which are all about helping moderate income people responsibly manage their own money.
Last week I was interviewed by Myriam DiGiovanni of the Credit Union Times. She wrote an article titled “Forget the Cool Factor, Focus on Millennials’ Needs” based on our talk. Here the full article (bold face mine):
Looking to engage meaningfully with younger consumers? Then stop assuming and start connecting through a common interest rather than trying to sell credit unions. “I think the main difference in marketing to Millennials and other generations is that they have great filters–they only see what they want to see. If you want to engage them, the message can’t be about brand but rather something they care about,” said Carol Phillips, president of consulting firm, Brand Amplitude, LLC. “It’s not about being hip but providing services they find useful now, like finding a job, figuring out how to finance their education or new business. They are starting out their lives at a difficult time and credit unions should credibly speak to that.”
She added that credit unions shouldn’t fall for the stereotypical myths surrounding this group such as they are all tech savvy–they are in fact tech dependent. Another myth is that they have money–many don’t and those that do are in saving mode or paying down debt said Phillips.
Forget about making the luxury appeal. When pricier purchases are made they tend to rationalize it based on whether it’s a good investment. According to Philips, for example, moving in with their parents is not viewed as an admission of defeat. Rather they see it as a strategy for saving.
Don’t look to the exclusive use of social media as a guaranteed in either. While they are very social, Millennials have close bonds with their parents, often consulting them regarding financial matters or major life decisions. Phillips said it’s yet another challenge because typically you’d market to the buying group, which in this case would include their trusted board of advisors consisting of parents, family members and friends. The key is for credit union to reach out and be a part of their world, and Phillips said initiating a conversation is a good start. Given the age span of the group is from 16 to 30 years old, she also advised credit unions to segment by interests. From there, credit unions can figure out how to connect in interesting ways whether around careers, music, causes or even sponsoring events that matter to them rather than talking about the latest checking product.
“Meaningful connecting requires recognizing that they are not the same as their parents. They do not respond to marketing, and that is the definition of different,” said Phillips. “Take time to understand who they are as people and introduce your services in context of what is relevant to them. Social media is about a humanization of the brand but is still just a tool [and] not a strategy. So be interesting, have a conversation.”
She added their values are no different than previous generations-they care about family, leading a good life, finding a fulfilling job and they want to give back.
One bank that seems to be getting it right with young adults is UMPQUA, a fast growing regional community bank in California, Oregon and Washington.
Their web site looks more like an ecommerce site than a traditional bank and they call their branches ‘stores’. The language is plain English and yet stylish. The checking account featured on the home page is called HIP( for High Interest Paperless Checking) and offers 2% APR on deposits and returns ATM fees. Nothing tricky about that! News is broken out locally and is called ‘murmurs’. There are quick links to ‘deals and steals’, ‘reorder checks and supplies’ and ‘attend a neighborhood event’. The navigation is straightforward as well and feels like you could do everything you need to do from opening an account to managing it to taking a loan, right from the web. There are spam alerts and interesting discussions. The site is very sticky and feels quite local, despite being spread across three states.
The short, awareness-oriented TV spots featured on the home page are cheerful, and perky, and not very ‘bank-like’ — “Bank on the Bright Side“, “Optimists Unite“, “Pursue Hopefulness“, ”You deposit your check in the Northwest economy, like a gentle rain in a garden of courage“, “Optimists are just realists ahead of their time“. The graphics and the voice over work together to create a hopeful feeling. I feel better just listening to them!
The part of the website I like best is under the tab heading ‘UMPQUA Life”. The sub categories speak directly to Millennial lives – Support, Belong, Discover, Inspire. The sub-subcategories further emphasize local charitable and volunteer opportunities, neighborhood events and community responsibility. There are links to social media like Twitter, but they are discreet. The site itself already feels like a social media site. Even the history page is fun, with just the right information about the banks’ origins with emphasis on what it is doing in the community with music, eco-friendly programs and being included in Fortune’s Best companies to work for.
It should be noted that UMPQUA’s products are not all that special. But, they are presented in a relevant and very accessible way that speaks directly to the Millennial mindset.
I suspect UMPQUA has been successful in attracting a higher than usual percentage of young adults and people who want banking to be less stuffy and more a seamless part of their lives. Other banks and credit unions could learn from their example.
7/11/2010
Forget the Cool Factor, Focus on Millennials’ Needs | Millennial Marketing
Organic Startup Ideas
Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator. April 2010
The best way to come up with startup ideas is to ask yourself the question: what do you wish someone would make for you?
There are two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to be necessary to some class of users other than you. Apple was the first type. Apple happened because Steve Wozniak wanted a computer. Unlike most people who wanted computers, he could design one, so he did. And since lots of other people wanted the same thing, Apple was able to sell enough of them to get the company rolling. They still rely on this principle today, incidentally. The iPhone is the phone Steve Jobs wants. [1]
Our own startup, Viaweb, was of the second type. We made software for building online stores. We didn't need this software ourselves. We weren't direct marketers. We didn't even know when we started that our users were called "direct marketers." But we were comparatively old when we started the company (I was 30 and Robert Morris was 29), so we'd seen enough to know users would need this type of software. [2]
There is no sharp line between the two types of ideas, but the most successful startups seem to be closer to the Apple type than the Viaweb type. When he was writing that first Basic interpreter for the Altair, Bill Gates was writing something he would use, as were Larry and Sergey when they wrote the first versions of Google.
Organic ideas are generally preferable to the made up kind, but particularly so when the founders are young. It takes experience to predict what other people will want. The worst ideas we see at Y Combinator are from young founders making things they think other people will want.
So if you want to start a startup and don't know yet what you're going to do, I'd encourage you to focus initially on organic ideas. What's missing or broken in your daily life? Sometimes if you just ask that question you'll get immediate answers. It must have seemed obviously broken to Bill Gates that you could only program the Altair in machine language.
You may need to stand outside yourself a bit to see brokenness, because you tend to get used to it and take it for granted. You can be sure it's there, though. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. In 2004 it was ridiculous that Harvard undergrads were still using a Facebook printed on paper. Surely that sort of thing should have been online.
There are ideas that obvious lying around now. The reason you're overlooking them is the same reason you'd have overlooked the idea of building Facebook in 2004: organic startup ideas usually don't seem like startup ideas at first. We know now that Facebook was very successful, but put yourself back in 2004. Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup idea. And in fact, it wasn't initially a startup idea. When Mark spoke at a YC dinner this winter he said he wasn't trying to start a company when he wrote the first version of Facebook. It was just a project. So was the Apple I when Woz first started working on it. He didn't think he was starting a company. If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been tempted to do something more "serious," and that would have been a mistake.
So if you want to come up with organic startup ideas, I'd encourage you to focus more on the idea part and less on the startup part. Just fix things that seem broken, regardless of whether it seems like the problem is important enough to build a company on. If you keep pursuing such threads it would be hard not to end up making something of value to a lot of people, and when you do, surprise, you've got a company. [3]
Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest.
While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with made-up ideas, they're the best source of organic ones, because they're at the forefront of technology. They use the latest stuff. They only just decided what to use, so why wouldn't they? And because they use the latest stuff, they're in a position to discover valuable types of fixable brokenness first.
There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. If you find something broken that you can fix for a lot of people, you've found a gold mine. As with an actual gold mine, you still have to work hard to get the gold out of it. But at least you know where the seam is, and that's the hard part.
Notes
[1] This suggests a way to predict areas where Apple will be weak: things Steve Jobs doesn't use. E.g. I doubt he is much into gaming.
[2] In retrospect, we should have become direct marketers. If I were doing Viaweb again, I'd open our own online store. If we had, we'd have understood users a lot better. I'd encourage anyone starting a startup to become one of its users, however unnatural it seems.
[3] Possible exception: It's hard to compete directly with open source software. You can build things for programmers, but there has to be some part you can charge for.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, and Jessica Livingston for reading drafts of this.
Top 10 Best Startup Blogs | Pathik Shah
Top 10 Blogs and Websites for Startups and Entrepreneurship Advice
Here’s a list of the best blogs and websites I’ve come across which focus on startups and entrepreneurship. Most of these blogs have really informative articles which provide excellent advice for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start their own company.
Top 10 Startup Blogs
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Paul Graham is the founder of Viaweb, Y Combinator (the most popular startup incubator which provides seed funding and advice to early stage startups) and Hacker News. His essays are some of the best articles on startups and entrepreneurship ever and should be on the reading list of every aspiring entrepreneur.
Mixergy is a blog by Andrew Warner, a successful entrepreneur which has a collection of interviews with a lot of startup founders including Paul Graham, Jason Fried, Jason Calacanis, Anand Shimpi, Alexis Ohanian etc about their early startup days and their experiences.
A startup blog offering basic advice about startup marketing, funding, raising capital etc by Dharmesh Shah, the founder of Hubspot and Pyramid Digital Solutions.
A blog on startups by Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur turned professor who taught a course on entrepreneurship to students at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University. Excellent advice for new startups.
A startup blog by Mark Suster, an entrepreneur turned VC. Has some great insights on entrepreneurship and advice on how to raise venture capital.
The blog of Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and Opsware. He is now a VC (Andreessen Horowitz) and his blog offers some of the best startup advice you can find online.
It’s the blog of Chris Dixon, the co-founder of Hunch and an early investor in many successful startups like Skype, Foursquare, Stack Overflow, TrialPay, DocVerse and Invite Media.
A blog by Fred Wilson, a VC (Union Square Ventures). Great tips on
raising venture capital and other advice on how to deal with VCs.A startup blog by Eric Ries, a proponent of the Lean Startup Methodology. Some really good posts there.
A startup blog by Jason Cohen, a successful entrepreneur (Smart Bear Software) with some nice posts for startup founders.
EDIT:
Ben Horowitz is a successful entrepreneur turned VC (He is the co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz). His blog is relatively new but is frequently updated with great advice for startups.
Gabriel Weinberg is the founder of Duck Duck Go, a really cool search engine which gives accurate results and an angel investor. His blog has some really good posts on startups, angel investing and such.
Startup News
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Techcrunch is basically a tech news blog which covers technology startups and also features articles and guest posts on entrepreneurship and startups from time to time.
GigaOM is a blog by Om Malik, a technology journalist which covers tech news and has some nice articles and interviews on tech startups.
ReadWriteStart is part of the ReadWriteWeb network which focuses on budding startups and has a lot of interviews of successful entrepreneurs.
The best startup blog focusing on Indian startups. It covers new Indian startups, features really good startup advice and has some excellent guest posts by successful Indian entrepreneurs.
Mashable is another tech news blog which covers web and social media startups.
If you like this post, please bump it on Hacker News and Reddit.
Note: Please comment and point me to any good startup blog that I may have missed.
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The Secret Science of Getting Rich Through Entrepreneurship | MoSo Technology Blog
Everywhere you turn nowadays, you always hear about venturing into entrepreneurship. But what is entrepreneurship exactly? It is actually defined as the process wherein a group or an individual makes an effort to pursue opportunities to satisfy needs and wants through uniqueness and innovation.
In a nutshell, entrepreneur solves problem for a profit. Some people have the misconception that entrepreneurs are gamblers in the sense that they take risks and invest in industries that have no record of success.
However, the truth is, these entrepreneurs take calculated risks that have the potential to provide them with huge returns. That is one of the secret science of getting rich. The ability to take calculated risk. The key factors you need to remember about entrepreneurship are opportunities, innovation, and growth.
An entrepreneur sees opportunities in environmental trends and changes that nobody has seen before and pursues this opportunity with whatever resources he has at hand. The second theme in entrepreneurship is innovation which involves transforming and revolutionizing existing products or services to cope up with the changing global environment.
The third theme is growth; this involves the continual efforts of an entrepreneur to expand his business locally and internationally. An entrepreneur is on the constant look out on how to create new approaches to make his business grow and become a huge success. In the secret science of getting rich, growth is very imporant. An an entrepreneur is not growing, he is declining.
These themes are the key factors which businesses are founded upon. The largest corporations you find today did not start out big, rather they started out as small enterprises by visionaries who want more than what is offered to them.
You can see from the history of some of the most successful business today that the founders of these businesses have taken great leaps of faith and incredible amounts of risks in order to be what they are today. Wherever you turn, you see the results of entrepreneurship.
But it is most obvious in internet commerce because this is a new industry. People that were unheard of before are becoming some of the riches names in the world and it is all because they have taken risks and have succeeded. So whether we realize it or not, it is the entrepreneurs who drive the global environment nowadays. They are the ones who are always seeking out opportunities and taking risks to improve our world and profit from it in return.
The business environment and even the technological advancements that are available today would not have been possible if these entrepreneurs did not come out of their comfort zone to invest in the development of these businesses.
As you can see, having the entrepreneurial spirit is definitely necessary for businesses to reach greater heights and provide better and faster products and services to their clients. It is no wonder then that a lot of business enterprises are hiring young and dynamic individuals with a vision and who are not afraid to take calculated risks to ensure the survival of the business tomorrow.
Alvaro Castillo has been writing about health and specializing pregnancy along with how to deal with the first year of their baby?s life for 10 years, helping women with positive results. For more information check out his website at http://www.myhomeparent.com or visit his blog http://myhomeparent.blogspot.com to share your opinion
The Compassionate Side of Corporate Entrepreneurship - The Ultimate Corporate Entrepreneur
« BJ Wishinsky: Using Technology to Transform Herself and Advance Women in Computing | Main
Sunday, 11 July 2010
The Compassionate Side of Corporate Entrepreneurship
Most of us have heard the old saying about giving someone a fish and you feed him for a day, but teaching a person how to fish and you have fed her for a lifetime.
I'm reminded of this when I see so many unemployed people right here in my own Silicon Valley sandbox as the result of company downsizing, rightsizing, restructuring, et al.
Given the Bay Area's penchant for start-ups, I'm surprised that so many professionals still struggle with managing their careers like business owners and why so many employers still fail to invest training dollars in entrepreneurial skills at the onboarding stage.
Instead, companies "invest" in outplacement firms to help their former employees "transition" into a world without a safety net. A friend's husband recently lost his job of eighteen years following an acquisition. The training and coaching that he's now receiving as part of his layoff package provides him with a glimmer of hope.
"I'm finally learning what it takes to truly manage my career."
How unfortunate that his former employer didn't teach him to fish while he was employed by the company--discovering innovative ways of feeding himself and others--years of missed employer-employee opportunities.
Nuts and Bolts of Corporate EntrepreneurshipIntroducing key aspects of corporate entrepreneurship is especially critical during the first six weeks of an employee's onboarding experience. An organization ensures a level playing field through shared knowledge that benefits everyone, so don't forget to include your current workforce along with your strategic suppliers in required CE training customized for the company.
- Level the playing field--defines entrepreneurial activities and cultural behavior
- Get it right from the start--ideation and understanding of the vetting process
- Establish clear lines of accountability--consistent across the board
- Provide course correction tips, handling personal and professional setbacks
Everyone in a company needs to know what it takes to operate a business. This doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will want to run their own business one day. However, knowing what it takes to build a successful business increases an employee's appreciation for the "many hats" it takes to do so and provides them with incentives to become "strategic careerists".
How many of the core, foundational, and differentiating knowledge and skills can you check off for yourself? What is your action plan for the remainder of 2010 to address any gaps?
Core CE Competence (Knowledge & Skill)
Business Building (infrastructure, strategic planning, marketing)
Finance (models, indicators, measurements)
Operations (implementation, sustaining innovation)
Foundational CE Competence
Communications
Relationship Management / Collaboration
Negotiations / Influencing skills
Sales / Persuasion skills
Personal Branding
Differentiating CE Competence
Personal Risktaking / Resilience
Entrepreneurial Leadership
Change Catalyst / Succession Strategist
Emotional Intelligence
Compassionate Leadership
Compassionate leadership prepares people for career success on their terms, shows workers how to rebound from adversity, and teaches them how to glean the gems from their professional experiences and setbacks.
Teaching people how to fish for themselves is another way to manage workplace fear. If people learn entrepreneurship skills and then get a chance to practice them with a regular paycheck coming in, they feel more confident about themselves, learn to trust their abilities, and realize that they can assume more risk and successfully manage their careers outside their comfort zones.
It becomes a win for the self-managed employee, a win for the company's leadership teams, and a win for the organization at large.
If a professional becomes unemployed or chooses to leave the corporate nest to start a business--possibly becoming a micro-supplier for their former employer--they know they can do it, because they have done it.
This is the compassionate side of corporate entrepreneurship. It's also smart business.Posted by Dee McCrorey on Sunday, 11 July 2010 in 1.0 | Entrepreneurial Advantage | Permalink ShareThis
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Nigerian Women Agro-entrepreneurship Development: Issues and Challenges | The Article Republic
Nigerian Women Agro-entrepreneurship Development: Issues and Challenges
Posted on 11. Jul, 2010 by admin in Women's Issues
Introduction
Suleiman (2006) defined entrepreneurship as “the willingness and ability of an individual to seek for investment opportunities to establish and run an enterprise successfully” while Drucker viewed an entrepreneur as a person who perceives business opportunities and takes advantage of the scarce resources and uses them profitably. Entrepreneurs are job creators and/or become self-employed rather than seekers of jobs in an overstretched public service. Using USA standard, a woman-owned enterprise is a small enterprise that is at least 51% owned, managed and operated by one or more women.
A small-scale farming is a farm holding established on a land area of not less than 5 hectares. In Nigeria, most of the small-scale farming enterprises are owned by men. This does not imply that Nigerian women agriculturists are not desirous of expanding their businesses due to so many challenges which border on gender issues, economic or socio-cultural barriers as well as government unfavourable policies. This paper, a purely descriptive research, employs secondary data to expound on the issues and challenges confronting the development of the Nigerian women to full blown agro- entrepreneurs for national economic advancement. The rest of the discussion in this paper is organized along the following issues;
· Women’s potentials in entrepreneurial skills.
· Why women entrepreneurship development?
· Policy Framework for Women Entrepreneurship Development.
· Challenges faced by women agro-entrepreneurs.
· Strategies for development of women agro-entrepreneurs.
· Conclusion.
Women’s Potentials in Entrepreneurial Skills
Women in general are naturally endowed with some exceptional abilities, which if properly harnessed for entrepreneurship purpose, could result in positive and enviable results. Women by nature;
v Have creative abilities
v Are blessed with ability to persist and pursue their desires
v Are good and patient nurtures of children, and this tenacity is usually transferred into business
v Are good innovators
v Have ability to develop passion for what they believe in
Waton (undated) cited in Okara (2005) identified the basic requirements of an entrepreneur to include: hardwork, teamwork, commitment, appreciation, listening, high expectations, setting achievable goals. Women, by nature and exposure to family relationships, possess most of these qualities that are essential and can be enhanced for entrepreneurial success.
Why Women Entrepreneurship Development?
Many researchers have shown that poverty is a malady that incapacitates its victim economically and indirectly subject him/her to a state of destitution, voicelessness, powerlessness and even violence (World Bank 2000; Okojie, 2002) Unfortunately, the most affected sex by the above incapacitation are women and children. Statistics show that women are poorer than men. The UNDP (1995) estimated that, about 60% of the world-poors, are women. Women are poorer because they are more vulnerable economically.
The findings of Thane (1978), Showalter (1987) and Lewis and Piachered (1987) cited in Magaji (2004) showed that women have been the poor sex throughout the 20th Century and have formed a substantial majority of the poor since poverty was first recognized. On why women are the poorest sex, the physical strength of women and various challenges limit them to specific soft duties making it difficult to be enterprising. Entrepreneurship development therefore is a crucial tool for women’s economic empowerment.
The benefits derivable from empowering the women folk are far reaching, starting with family advancement and eventually touching on the national and global economic advancement. According to the Nigerian Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya H. S. Bungudu, the latest Nigerian census revealed that women constitute 49.9% of the nation’s population; the underrepresentation of women (2%) in the nation’s development processes in finance, business and investment fronts renders 40% of the population inadequately positioned to contribute to the economic growth of the country. It is the nation that blends the strengths of women and men that will lead the world in development (Kiyosaki 1993) in the field of agriculture and other sectors.
Entrepreneurship or investing is not an exclusive reserve of any gender. Both women and men generate the same result provided they follow the principles of investment. Kiyosaki (1993) proves with statistical data in United States, that women are better investors than men. A year 2000 National Association of Investors Corporation (NAIC) study found that women-only clubs achieved average annual returns of 32% since 1951 versus 23% for men-only investment clubs. The verdict is; women know how to handle money and can be greater entrepreneurs than men if the various obstacles to development is removed or minimized.
Policy Framework for Women Entrepreneurship Development
There are neither policies nor strategies for entrepreneurship development that is specifically tailored to women (Olutunla, 2008). The Nigerian government’s policy of promoting entrepreneurship dated back to the early 1970s. The hope of promoting small scale enterprises to stimulate entrepreneurship was documented in the 2nd National Development Plan (1970-74). This policy continued in the 3rd (1975-80) and the 4th National Development Plan through various strategies of technical, financial and management of the small scale industries. The Federal Government’s concern for the menacing problem of mass unemployment in the mid-1980s spurred the setting up of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in 1986 and the Work For Yourself Programme (WFYP) in 1987. Both were essentially joint programmes of training and financial support to entrepreneurs. The NDE operations included three core programmes (i) Youth Employment and Vocational Skills Development Program (YEVSDP) (ii) agricultural programs (iii) the small scale industries and graduate employment scheme. The NDE, though starved of fund for some time, has achieved a lot in promoting employment, create wealth and alleviating women poverty. The Better Life for Rural Women Programme (BLRWP) initiative of a first lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Maryam Babangida, was an entrepreneurship development programme specifically for promoting education, health and economic development of women. It made unprecedented contribution to women through the cooperative organizations. The spirit of BLRWP is still operating today through the subsequent first ladies. A number of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) also came up to promote entrepreneurship development. Prominent amongst them was the Country Women Association of Nigeria (COWAN) which contributed immensely towards women entrepreneurship development through organization of many cooperatives and micro-credit schemes and in partnership with the United Nations.
The Role of Women in Agriculture
A significant amount of work has been carried out in developing countries on the potential of women in boosting food production. Boserup (1970) described Black Africa as the region of female farming par excellence. FAO (1982) estimated that the rural women contribute two-third of all the time that is put into traditional agriculture in Africa. Accat (1983) also pointed out that 80% of African women are engaged in agriculture. Patel and Antonio (1973) reported that 95% of the Yoruba women of the Southwestern Nigeria are engaged in farm works, growing yams, maize, tobacco and cassava, poultry and fish farming. They also participate in bush clearing, land preparation and weeding. In addition to their role in production, they are actively engaged in harvesting, processing and marketing of farm produce. The participation of Igbo men in nonfarm activities and waged employment has resulted in an increased workload for women in food crop production as well as a breakdown of the gender division of labor in agriculture. Igbo women now undertake some of the conventional male agricultural tasks in addition to those in the female domain (Ezumah and Di Domenico, 1995). The predominance of women in the small-scale fisheries post-harvest activities: micro-fish retailing, fish processing, fish distribution and marketing, make women the major players in the socio-economic development of the West African countries.
Despite women’s extensive and varied participation in agriculture, they continue to have less access to credit and modern agriculture inputs. Consequently, their farm works is labor-intensive, yields meager economic returns (Buvinie and Mehra, 1990) and operate mostly at subsistence level. International Labour Organization (ILO 2003) quoted in Akpera and Sunday (2008) reported that Nigerian and African women entrepreneurs in general are in the micro enterprise sector and almost invisible in the small and medium enterprise categories.
The Challenges of Nigerian Women Agro-Entrepreneurs
Some of the many obstacles that hinder women enterprise development, agribusiness growth and improved income earnings include;
1) Finance
The greatest challenge for Nigerian women in agribusiness is lack of finance. Women in agribusiness need substantial finance both for start-up and expansion. Finance could be in form of equity or from external sources. Equity from informal sources includes personal savings, friends and relatives, traditional (esusu), professional and age-group associations as well as formal co-operative societies.
External finance is majorly from banks (specialized, development, commercial, etc), government agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), international donors, etc. Entrepreneurs are expected to provide, in some cases, 25% of fund applied for and/or produce collaterals before accessing these external finances. It has been difficult for women to raise equity for own business because most women interested or engaged in farming earn low income. Many of the commercial or development banks are reluctant to grant agricultural loans due generally to the high agricultural risk factor or because they do not have competent assessors as in the case of fish farming. The high interest rate charged as well as the demand for collateral of landed property or other assets also compound the issue.
Currently, the Microfinance banks (MFB) are the government’s latest major organ of policy for entrepreneurship finance in Nigeria. In an ongoing research conducted recently, it was discovered that male to female application and approval by MFB are in the ratio 65% to 35%. This discrepancy was linked to women entrepreneurs approaching banks on an individual basis and lack of soundly written business plan and/or feasibility studies (Olutunla, 2008).
2) Manpower and Education
The whole business be- it agricultural or any other, revolves around the entrepreneur (visionary) as she combines all other human, financial and material resources to create an enterprise of value. The chief executive of the business outfit must be knowledgeable to effectively mobilize resources to advantage. Agribusiness at small or medium scale is highly professional, technologically driven and require some level of education. Education not only provides basic knowledge and skills to improve health and Iivelihood, but it empowers women to take their rightful place in society and the development process (Fasokun 2000).
Entrepreneurial education seems to be the major key policy to promote entrepreneurship development for women in Nigeria. Entrepreneurship education should be inculcated into school curriculum at all levels. Research indicates that Small and Medium Enterprise Industrial Empowerment Scheme (SMEIES) operators ranked the reasons for failure of entrepreneurs’ application for loans and came up with reasons that range from bad feasibility studies, poor management skills, lack of proper accounting, poor character checks and attitudes among others. All these are challenges that can be remedied by entrepreneurship education. Even as the 93 approved Nigerian universities have adopted entrepreneurial studies, funds and the dearth of teachers to train the students has remained an obstacle.
A number of current training centers/programs are urban-based, for example, the Industrial Development Centers established in the 1960s are urban-based. Small Medium Entrepreneurial Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) aimed at facilitating credit, technology markets, capacity building, training and technical support for SMEs and provide adequate linkage with women bodies is urban-based and starved of funds. Agribusiness is rural-based and better educated farmers are more likely to adopt new technologies and have access to credit and extension services (Adereti, 2000).
3) Technology
Many women, due to lack of exposure and financial limitations, still make use of old technology in farming, processing and preservation thus leading to drudgery and low output.
4) Cultural Restrictions/Weak Land Rights:
The Nigerian culture cannot be described as being gender friendly. For example, the “Kule” policy in the North where married women are forbidden from going out of the house in daylight for business is an initiative/development-killer policy that should be discouraged in this 21st Century. In Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, where women have prime responsibility for food production, they are generally limited to user rights to land and subject to the consent of a male relative (FAO, 1982). Culture and social practices discriminate against women to be enterprise successors/inheritors or own independent assets which could easily serve as collaterals. Such unequal land rights are reflected in the smaller land sizes of women farmers thus limiting them economically.
5) Lack of Equipment and Appropriate Technology
Despite women’s extensive and varied participation in agriculture, they continue to have less access to modern agriculture inputs. Consequently, women agro-entrepreneurs work under very difficult and laborious conditions, using crude traditional technology. Technology is closely related to finance and education. Nigerian women entrepreneurs, especially in agriculture, work under very difficult and laborious conditions, using crude traditional technology. There is urgent need for provision of modern, cost effective and affordable technologies for the use of women.
Moreover, some new technology has often been inappropriate to women’s needs. There is a need to define some priority actions to promote the role of women in the economy because it has been showed that women are productive and efficient when they have access to the right technologies and opportunities.
6) Erroneous Ideas about Women and Credit
There are certain myths about women in respect to credit which have made them to remain poor and limited their entrepreneurial prospects. One of such myths is that poor women make poor credit risks. This is being proved wrong as Olutunla (2008) reported that Nigerian women have been found to be more faithful in terms of loan repayment to Banks than men.
7) Entrepreneurial Attitude
According to Akpa (2007), an average entrepreneur is rugged and aggressive. These are common attributes of men while most women are of the gentle and kind disposition. Men tend to focus on gettingthe job done while women tend to focus on being more inclusive and relational. If a woman entrepreneur is to succeed, she must adopt some level of ruggedness and aggressiveness. Success is not gender-friendly.
8) Research and Extension Services
For a long time, agronomic researchers do not pay attention to the role of women in the farming system. Research into the activities of women in agriculture is gaining attention only recently. A survey in Ogun State, Nigeria (Elabor-Idemudia, 1991) and Osun State, Nigeria (Ogbimi and Williams, 1999) revealed that Extension Agents visited between 7-10% of women farmers every week compared to 70% of the male farmers who received weekly visits. An FAO (1989) study found government investment on agriculture represented less than half the sector’s contribution to national income, therefore, it is reasonable to guess that women’s access to extension services and training especially in the area of fish farming, processing, packaging, distribution and marketing are unlikely to improve when the overall funding and availability of services is declining.
9) Misplaced Focus
Many agricultural projects and programs are not suited to the special circumstances of women or may not reach women at all, thus truncating the intended effort to increase food production.
10) Market and Marketing
Due to lack of good roads in Nigeria, electricity, poor access to information and poor networking, many farm produce perish thus discouraging women farmers.
Strategies for Women Agro-Entrepreneurship Development
· The complementary policy issues in entrepreneurship education should include increasing women enrolment in schools at all levels especially in the field of agriculture to reduce gender inequality. Budgetary allocation should be made to accommodate more continuing and vocational education.
· More seminars/workshops should be sponsored and extended to rural areas to increase women’s capacity to start and grow their agribusiness, prepare sound business plan/feasibility studies and increase their technical and managerial capacity in agribusiness.
· Modern processing plants/storage facilities should be installed for women groups on government/private joint partnership basis so that women can process and store their farm produce with ease.
· The enabling environment in terms of gender-friendly policies, good roads, pipe-borne water and electricity should be provided by the various arms of government.
· Cooperatives and women groups should be more formally instituted and encouraged among women to position them strategically to access fund and other inputs with ease.
· The Government should mandate the commercial Banks to produce more gender-friendly loan packages (low interest rates and more relaxed duration of repayment).
· Women should be exposed to the latest agro-technology from time to time to remove drudgery in farming, processing and preservation techniques.
· Nigerian women should be encouraged to network more, both at the national and international levels for more exposure, to access fund and export information.
· Agro-extension institutions should be boosted and more women extension agents be trained to reduce women to extension workers ratio and for wider coverage of women agriculturists.
Conclusion
Nigeria’s vision of becoming one of the top twenty leading economies of the world by the year 2020, otherwise known simply as vision 20:20 appears compelling enough to energize its over 150 million people (nearly half of which are women) to make the vision a reality. To accomplish this laudable goal, there is urgent need to pay attention to the development of agro-women entrepreneurs so that they can take their place in family advancement and national economic development. The government and development/change agencies must not only be prepared to recognize the economic role of the women but must also extend to them the same recognition and facilities as the men are enjoying.
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References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.
Fasokun, T.O. (200-): The role of education in poverty eradication. In “Education for the Millennium Development” Vol.1 Eds; M. Boucouvalas and R. Aderinoye. Spectrum Books Ltd., Ibadan pg.459-475
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Olutunla G.T. (2008): Policy Framework and Strategy for Entrepreneurship Development of Nigerian Women. A paper presented at the 3-day International workshop on “Promoting Entrepreneurship Education Amongst Nigerian Women: Issues and Approaches” Abuja. 15p
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1Adewumi A.A.; 2Mokuolu J.O; and 3Longe O.O.
1Department of Biological Sciences, University of Education, Ikere Ekiti
Email: zoewumi@yahoo.com
Tel:08032473221
2Department of Banking and Finance, University of Education, Ikere Ekiti
3Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Education, Ikere Ekiti
Tags: Agroentrepreneurship, Challenges, Development, Issues, Nigerian, Women
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