LCCI: We Have Trained About 800 Entrepreneurs in Three Years

By Peter Uzoho

The Director, Research, Advocacy and Entrepreneurial Development,
Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Dr. Vincent Nwani, has stated that the LCCI had in the last three years, through its entrepreneurship development programme, trained about 800 entrepreneurs, who he said were doing well in their various businesses.
Speaking at the workshop for ‘Practical Writing Business Plan and Feasibility Study’ organised by the LCCI, in Lagos, over the weekend, the Director noted that the focus of the workshop was teaching businesses how to develop and write good business plans that would promote successes in their various businesses.

Nwani noted that one of the activities of LCCI was entrepreneurial development through skill acquisition, skill mentoring programme, vocational programme and any form of skill acquiring activity, adding that it is a platform to give to the society and promote commerce and industry, while strengthening the skill gap in the industrial and corporate environment.
He noted that: “It’s a programme where people who love skill come to acquire it by attending training programmes free of charge. Within the last three years, the German government has been funding this, and it’s going to terminate by the end of 2017 where LCCI should be able to take up from there. And in the last years, we have trained almost 800 entrepreneur graduates who are doing well in their various businesses.

“Our motive is to breach this issue of lack of finance or capital. The last aspect of the programme is monitoring, business clinic. They are writing their business to us and we will follow them up and help them to write this business plan-give them suggestion, give them data, and help them do market survey free of charge so that they can be able to put down this business plan, and also be able to defend it.”

Also speaking, one of the trainers, Mrs. Fayo Williams, stressed that one of the challenges faced by young entrepreneurs was lack of proper documentation of data which she attributed to some cultural practices.

She noted that another challenge was lack of good packaging for their business plans in order to access funds from investors, adding most entrepreneurs don’t understand how to craft their business plan such that it will gain the interest of an investor.”
“We have a culture that tells you that everything is in the hands of God which is true. But in the space of entrepreneurship, there is a procedure for finding out information, for conducting market research, and then being able to make a good forecast,” she added.