NGO holds business clinic on e-waste, digital skills for trainees in Kano

By Aliyu Inuwa Mansir On Jan 26, 2024

CITAD, business clinic, e-waste, digital skills , trainees , Kano — NGO holds business clinic on e-waste, digital skills for trainees in Kano

A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has conducted a business support clinic for the beneficiaries of its e-waste collection and digital livelihood skills training programs in Kano State.

CITAD Executive Director, Y. Z. Ya’u, represented by the senior program officer Malam Isah Garba, at the event on Thursday, said the aim of the Business Support Clinic was to equip the participants with the best practices of business management and link them with opportunities such as low-interest loans, mentorship, and continuous skill development in their chosen sector.

He said the trainees underwent intensive capacity building on entrepreneurial skills, which had two components: electronic waste collection and digital livelihood skills.

“Business support clinic is for emerging businesses to meet with the potential business doctors, lay their complaints, and hear from them how to diagnose the problems and prescribe solutions for them. We presume this gathering is symbolic, but for businesses not for diseases.”

“It has been the tradition of CITAD to come up with entrepreneurship skills, especially for young people, considering the high rate of unemployment in the country and the need for young people to be not only employable but also employers themselves.

So we have been conducting such training, which has two components: one is for those who were trained in the area of electronic waste, how to collect, reuse, repair, recycle them, and how to establish businesses in that area.

The other component is for the trainees who were trained in the area of digital skills; they were trained in the area of basic ICT skills and online marketing, and they also developed their businesses on that. So these are two sets of trainees.”

The Regional Manager of the Corporate Affairs Commission Kano office, Alhaji Mustapha Dahiru, who made a presentation on how people can register the names of their businesses, said according to Section 7 of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, CAC is an independent body responsible for regulating the formation and management of companies in Nigeria.

He added that the mandate of the CAC is to administer the act, which includes the regulation and supervision of the formation, incorporation, management, and winding up of companies, as well as the establishment and maintenance of companies’ registry and offices in all the states of the federation appropriately and adequately, among others.

The representative of the Bank of Industry (BOI), Kano office, Fatima Abdullahi Paiko, said the bank deals with companies, not individuals, and urged the participants to register the names of their companies.

“Only registered companies can access loans from us, and the loans range from one million to ten million naira, while those of the limited liability companies range from one million to two billion naira and above. So for any one of you who wants to access our loan, go and register with CAC.”

Ridwan Abubakar, one of the trainees, said the training was very helpful, and noting that he would make use of the knowledge acquired during the training.

“I really benefited from the training, and I will make use of it to provide jobs for other people.”