Micro-funding identifiable “small wills” household business potentials for sustainable development

Micro-funding identifiable “small wills” household business potentials for sustainable development

By

Reverend Father Abel GE AGBULU CM

(Vincentian Fathers Nigeria)

To activate through micro-funding the emerging resilience for socioeconomic growth among small household business enterprises across Idoma communities from low-income margin toward the middle class brackets

• Micro-funding: Providing small loans such as cash, assets, trade tools, savings, or other financial services to persons or ventures that ordinarily excluded from traditional banking system. Such persons or ventures are by general standards classified as small business owners, low income earners or entrepreneurs.
• Low Income category: As against the middle-income earning countries or regions, the low income earning countries are those whose benchmark for the poverty line is placed at below $2.5 USD per day.
• Africa in the global poverty margin: According to the Poverty and Inequality Platform [PIP] updated survey as referenced to by the World Bank website, over 700 million people live today on less than $2.15 USD per day..

A figure that represents the extreme poverty line relevant for low-income countries. And, three-quarter of this category of people live in Sub-Sahara Africa or in fragile and conflict-affected countries. The African continent alone constitutes 67% of this extremely poor families. In terms of the inequality in global wealth distribution, the survey also show that Africa falls within that same bracket of regions with the most discrepancy between the extremely rich and the extremely poor population.   

• Experts analysis show that the poverty index in Nigeria is projected to increase by 38.8% in the current year. This is blamed on low employment rate and low consumer spending due to low purchasing power among others. The inflation on the one hand versus staggering commensurate increase in the minimum wages of consumers is also de facto.
• Press Release on National Measure of multidimensional poverty Survey results of November 17, 2022: This Release among others provided multidimensional poverty estimates as the senatorial districts levels following a sampling of over 56, 000 households across the 36 States of the Federation and FCT.. 
• 63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensional poor.
• These categories of households experience just one-quarter of all possible deprivations.
• 65% (approx. 86 million) of these number reside in the North, while 35% (47 million, approximately) reside in the South.
• Among others, the indicators by which they measured these poverties include among others, healthcare, food security, sanitation, and housing.
• MPI show that the numbers are higher in the rural areas than in the suburbs and cities: 72% of people are poor in the rural areas whereas 42% are in the urban areas.
• MPI survey reports show that 67.5% of the children population (between 0—17 years) are multi-dimensionally poor, and shockingly, 51% of all poor people are children. 
• According to the Report, the highest deprivations are in the indicator of child engagements—where over half of poor children lack the intellectual stimulation that is pivotal to early childhood development
• The incidence of Child MPI is above 50% in all States.
• 2.1% of the total population in the country live with a child aged 15-17 who is the first generation in that household to have completed primary school
• Wikipedia definition of the middle class: The term refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status.
• The middle class characterized elsewhere by The Economist a 2009 edition, as those having a reasonable amount of discretionary income, people having a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter.
• They are usually defined by education, wealth, environment and nurture, social network, and lifestyle and value systems.
• Experts argue that the middle class are the fulcrum or the driving force for economic recovery, stability, and sustainable development for society so to speak.  
• Social factors such as insecurity, fuel price surge, inflationary forces, brain drain, and food scarcity mitigate predictable emergence of a middle class population.
• Every effective effort aimed at economic recovery is a buffer toward the birth and the growth of a much needed middle class population
• World Bank analysts agree on the scientific fact that the household model is critical both to measure and monitor poverty and equity indicators. It also offers a most realistic baseline to measuring economic performance rating of a society.
• Among others also, it provides comprehensive and representative data on living conditions
• It helps to identify vulnerable groups
• It allows for poverty as well as wealth estimation, and enables analysis of poverty as wall as growth dynamics and policy impacts

See worldbank.org website, October 15, 2024 on Poverty at a glance

• To activate through mobilization and strong indigenous advocacy for a robust micro-funding scheme for the pilot and long-term incentivized support for local household business wills
• To conduct a thorough survey in order to identify for adoption a small number of already exiting household enterprise in at least 3 rural indigenous commercial communities for mobilization in lieu of the scheme, and
• To replicate model across all 9 Idoma speaking LGAs of Benue State with a goal toward generating approximately 90 middle class households by the end of 2023. 
• Recommended Action Plan
  • Define a workable Timeline for the Mapping
  • Set up a research team with capacity for synergistic study on the subject-matter in order to formulate a clear vision and mission statements, respectively, that will serve as the program Instrumentum Laboris to begin with
  • Launch an indigenous Campaign Team that would market the vision and present the mission dream to potential local accessible and willing indigenous middle class collaborators and entrepreneurs for buy-in
  • Work on the prerequisite measures that must be in place for the setting up of micro funding—including all the necessary security standard measures that must be in place
  • Do ALL the registrations in order to acquire ALL the needed licenses for operation as a corporate entity
  • Conduct town halls and media campaigns and public discussions across the 9 LGAs and equally reach out to the Idoma diaspora, and even third-parties potential partner groups and organizations—local and international
  • Ensure the certainty of a baseline funding available before launching out to a next phase
  • Define clear criteria for selection of the 3 communities for the Pilot scheme
  • Formulate simple and measurable set of criteria for selection of potential indigenous beneficiaries for the scheme. The simpler and more comprehensive the easier to implement
  • Conduct thorough market research for better understanding of the potential target communities earmarked for impact. There is need to identify the actual areas of real needs, the
  • Host a consecutive in-house meeting with key stakeholders of the 3 respective communities earmarked for application as well as with the potential beneficiaries for the Q & A prerequisites
  • Conduct a comprehensive profiling of the potential adoptees. Ensure that in the collation, the discrepancies are marginal for standardization purposes.
  • Conduct all the necessary trainings for the beneficiaries.
  • Ensure that the beneficiaries internalize and commit to both the pilot vision of the project as well as the long term vision hence understanding the importance of their success story for the life of the Program in general.
  • Educate them on the establish matrix for monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and accounting as the case may be.
  • Mobilize them with the needed micro funds, and all other available services earmarked for their activation.
  • Set up expertise for risks management in order to ensure success of the pilot phase
  • Such strategies as risks mitigation matrices, sound credit policies and mechanism for unbiased implementation, re-investment provisions, loan monitoring, and assuredness of savings culture by beneficiaries—all of these need to be in place right from the onset.
  • Hiring of expert Consultants on small business management including real and imaginary threats to small business survival must also be in view.
  • Such earmarked pilot communities should demonstrate the least propensity for social instability, or security and safety.
  • Communities for adoption should as well demonstrate local capacity for resilience to economic risks, such as indigenous patronage, extended family backups, and first-level intervention to threats
  • Conduct intermittent service programs for the pilot beneficiaries that would recommit their determination to meet prescribed business target
  • Ensure that the M&E tracking is highly effective for the benefit of the bigger picture in view
  • Initiate an extended pre-assessment survey to other earmarked communities across the 9 LGAs in lieu of the long-term projection and its implementation
  • Publicize reports that demonstrate results on the Pilot at all relevant platforms during the pilot phase. Instigate a robust public interests through media campaign such as radio talks shows, television broadcasts at local, regional, and national stations
  • Aim at building bigger strategic partnerships and collaboration with governments bodies, local entrepreneurs, and even with Financial institutions who see the evidence of guaranteed security of their funds if invested in your program
  • Mobilize grass root robust indigenous patriotism where the vision for an emerging economic middle class population in Idoma land will be increasingly appreciated and keyed into.
  • Organize pep talks and debates at schools—at primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions within the region alike.

Apply ALL key lessons learned from the pilot in the implementation of the broader micro funding scheme

• The Idoma nation collectively display a resilience in their peasant farming from time immemorial, which indeed in principle offers a viable opportunity for goodwill support for enhancement and growth
• The Idoma nation by statistics still holds on to the family unit as comprising father, mother, children, and extended family, and village community. A household baseline as template for impact is already in place
• The Idoma nation by custom exhibits common/shared ownership as well as use of assets including the dividends that accrue for them. Hence, the family/household model ipso facto possesses inherent measures of both business collaterals and internal M&E tracking mechanism provided there can be a formal recommitment forum for those earmarked for impact ab initio.
• The Idoma nation geo-economically falls within the earlier brackets of the world’s current extreme poor population living below the global as well as national poverty margin of $2.15 USD per day, whose children and women population display the multidimensional poverty indicators glarilly.
• The majority of the resilient Idoma households certainly cannot have access to ordinary financial funding/services, hence they stand qualified for micro financing by several ramifications.
• Given the geometric rise in population partly due to their capacity to give birth (unofficial), they possess an inherent potential for building a future population with more economic resources available and stronger capacity to participate in the growth process of both their local economy as well as that of the nation at large.
• Hence, therein lies the justification for the present initiate first to run a pilot for small family business by providing the required tools that would enable them rise above the poverty line of $2.15 to perhaps $6.15 within a projected and participatory 18 months period. Q.E.D.