TheCable

In honour of the Women’s history month, the United States Embassy on Tuesday hosted women entrepreneurs to an  event on entrepreneurship and technology.

The event was done in collaboration with Union bank, Leadway Assurance, Global Shapers community and Women’s Technology empowerment centre.

Rhonda Watson, the public diplomacy officer at the US consulate general in Lagos, said the rationale behind the programme was to empower women and encourage women to start businesses.

“We want women to know the importance of owning businesses and real estate,” he said.

“We want to raise the consciousness on how they can be more powerful. Women are the driving force in a society and they are waking up and it is good to see the power of women unleash.”

Binta Adesida, unit head of IT projects Union bank, said CBN was working towards making funds available to small businesses.

“CBN has made funds available for small business enterprise (SMEs) and banks are providing channels to distribute it,” Adesida said.

“Access to working capital is a work in progress and we hope to make things better than they are now.”

She stressed that the programme was aimed at broadening the horizon of women in terms of technology, saying: “The minimum level of technology women use is their mobile phone.

“We have to expose women to programmes available and teach them to use the internet to make their businesses smart ones.”

The programme was well-attended and the participants were exposed to various ways to improve their businesses such as how to build their businesses (for people who have not started), how to use the social media to improve the image of the business and how to apply for bank loans.

The US diplomatic mission in Nigeria is hosting a series of programmes in collaboration with organisations to help the Nigerian woman discover herself and harness her talents.