I thought that this initiative will help to better entrepreneurs as far as skill sets, which is important for successful business operations etc.

http://www.opportunitiesforafricans.com/google-launches-digital-skills-africa-online-portal-for-young-africans/

This article features entrepreneurial funding sources available for Nigerians.

https://www.businessdayonline.com/7-funds-available-nigerian-entrepreneurs-2017-2/

7 funds available for Nigerian entrepreneurs in 2017

January 28th, 2017 o.ejiro@s19080.p615.sites.pressdns.com/en’ onlineeditor BDLife & Arts, Life 1 comments

Even though experts generally agree that finance is not the biggest problem facing Nigerian entrepreneurs, many of them still believe that it still ranks among the first five.

Understanding the critical importance of funding to Nigerian business owners and entrepreneurs, Start-Up Digest, in its characteristic manner, has dug up some of the easy-to-get funds available in the country this year.

Criteria

The general criterion for accessing these funds is the capacity to present a bankable and viable business plan. The entrepreneur should be clear on where he wants to be in the near future, and must also be able to describe the market for his or her products.

BoI Funds

If there is anywhere entrepreneurs can get cheap or single-digit funds (often at nine percent lending rate), it’s from the Bank of Industry (BoI).

This development finance institution (DFI) has been rated by many local and international agencies as one of the best managed banks in the world.

The BoI has a number of funds that entrepreneurs of all levels can access. First is the Graduate Entrepreneurship Fund (GEF), which is meant for serving members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Candidates are allowed to submit their business ideas, which are then reviewed by a team of experts. The NYSC members whose ideas are marketable and bankable are then selected, trained for four weeks and then given between N500,000 and N2 million.

There are also the Cottage Agro Processing (CAP) Fund for small and medium agro processors; Nolly Fund for players in the Nollywood industry, as well as Fashion Fund for designers and other players in the value chain.

In fact, the bank has other matching and managed funds, including a fund for the automotive industry. Through 122 business development experts, entrepreneurs can access funds easily. It is also easy to access some of the bank’s products through its website.

The bank has a N5 billion fund from Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote to finance SMEs at a single digit rate.

“We want to continue to create opportunities for Nigerian entrepreneurs and support the industrialisation efforts of the government,” said Waheed Olagunju, acting CEO and MD of BoI, at a forum in Lagos in 2016.

Tony Elumelu Fund

Tony Elumelu Foundation has $100 million for 10,000 African entrepreneurs. This will continue to be available for another seven to eight years. If you are in agriculture, fashion and design, light manufacturing, ICT, and solid minerals, among others, then apply for the on-going Tony Elumemu fund. You can be lucky to be one of 1,000 entrepreneurs to be shortlisted.

Through the Elumelu fund, Momarr Mass Taal, the CEO of Tropingo Foods in The Gambia, who got $5,000 seed capital in 2015, turned his enterprise into a $1.2 million revenue business.

GroFin Fund

GroFin, a development financier, has committed over $500 million to funding Nigerian micro, small and medium business (MSMEs) across the country.

The firm has five different types of fund: the Aspire Nigeria Fund, the Growth Africa Fund, the Small Growing Business Fund, the Aspire Small Business Fund and the Aspire Growth Fund.

The Aspire Nigeria Fund, the Growth Africa Fund and the Small Growing Business Fund cater for all parts of Nigeria except the Niger Delta.

The Aspire Small Business Fund provides a minimum of $100,000 and a maximum of $1.5 million to SMEs in Nigeria.

The Aspire Small Business Fund and the Aspire Growth Fund cater for the Niger Delta.

The Aspire Small Business Fund provides between $10,000 and $100,000 to small business owners in the oil-rich region, while the Aspire Growth Fund frees between $100,000 and $3 million to businesses to stimulate growth in the area. GroFin provides its funds mostly for a maximum of six years.

Shell LiveWire

The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited has a number of funds for young entrepreneurs, including women.

Through the programme , Shell provides support, access to training, guidance, and business mentorship to young entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 35.

The programme operates mainly in the Niger Delta region and aims to inspire, encourage and support young people to start up their own businesses through the provision of finance and training for young entrepreneurs, according to Shell.

Lagos State Employment Trust Fund

Lagos State has N25 billion to support SMEs. The fund is divided into two categories; micro and small businesses. Under the micro, businesses can access up to N500, 000 loans with an interest rate of five percent and a tenor of one year. For the small business category, businesses can get up to N5 million for a tenor of three years. The criteria for accessing the funds include: membership of a business organisation, which will recommend the business for the loan; Lagos State tax receipt for at least six months, and Lagos state residency card. This takes three weeks for processing.

“There are various funding available to owners of small businesses. In our business organisation we have access to the government Social Intervention Fund, Lagos State Employment Trust Fund and the Bank of Industry micro lending fund,” Femi Egbesola, national president, Association of Small Business Owners (ASBON), told Start-Up Digest.

Social Intervention Fund of FG

A total of N6 billion was allocated under the Social Intervention Fund of the 2017 budget. The criteria for accessing the fund include membership of a business organisation. The fund is for artisans and owners of micro businesses. The artisans of business owners can only access a maximum of N100, 000 at three percent interest rate on a year tenor.

Oxfam

Oxfam has a number of funds for Nigerian entrepreneurs.Oxfam, an international confederation of charitable organisations focused on the alleviation of global poverty, recently disbursed €100 million to high-impact SMEs in Nigeria through Nextzon.

Here is a link to a law review piece (student comment) that synthesizes all of the cases that we talked about in class today–Sony (Betamax); Napster and Groskster; and Aereo. It also discusses another pair of cases in depth, the Dish Network cases.

The student comment explains each of these cases, and ultimately reminds the reader that although many have called the Aereo decision “the new Sony Betamax case,” the issue is not so easily distilled. (comment at 516). Rather: “In Aereo, the main issue is whether the copyright infringement derives from a violation of the right to publicly perform, while in Sony or the Dish cases, the infringement derived from a violation of the reproduction right.” (Id. at 517).

Overall, I found this student comment to be informative, and I enjoyed learning about the Dish case as well. (The Dish case(s) related to Dish Network’s DVR system and its ad-skipping feature of this DVR system.) It walks the reader through our cases in a historical way, tying them all together. The piece asserts that litigation that stifles innovation in order to maintain the status quo will hinder the “growth and development efforts in the future.” (Id. at 520). This seems to comport with Professor McKenna’s general theory that decisions such as Aereo can have far-reaching impacts on the development of better technology.

Relating to our group project topic:

http://www.spacex.com/news/2017/02/27/spacex-send-privately-crewed-dragon-spacecraft-beyond-moon-next-year

In honor of today’s copyright reading, here is an article explaining copyright and trademark protections in the context of a startup or entrepreneurial business. The article (aimed at entrepreneurs, not attorneys) first provides an overview of the two, and some comparisons. It also explains “common law rights,” those rights which perhaps do not require even a filing to gain.

The interesting part of the article, I think, is near the end. It tells entrepreneurs to focus their efforts and budget on registering trademarks, because “since trademarks more often have a higher impact on the average company’s asset value and provides some critical competitive positions against others.” (article, near bottom). This is interesting, and could help the soft IP attorneys among us perhaps provide better services to our small business clients. I think another interesting twist on this would be considering how services such as LegalZoom can provide low cost services in this area, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Are “entrepreneurial blues” real? This article suggests it is: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289430

Writing to entrepreneurs who may be facing “entrepreneurial blues,” the article states: “The fact is, you have much to be grateful for. You are your own boss; you have a vision worth chasing; and you are creating products people want, hiring people who need work and achieving things quietly desperate people won’t.” I thought this article was interesting because it brought a sense of reality to our class conversations. An entrepreneur’s business is, as the article states, “a wild ride like a rollercoaster.” While we’ve described entrepreneurs as resilient, flexible, and passionate, the truth is that their endeavors are risky. This article, while perhaps having a negative undertone, still has an optimistic message for entrepreneurs who are determined to succeed.

 

https://hbr.org/2017/03/when-america-was-most-innovative-and-why

Article from Harvard Business Review analyzing different factors that made the 19th and 20th century in the United States the “golden age of innovation.” Of particular interest to our discussion, the article notes that today most patents are associated with inventors working for for large firms, while that was not the case during the golden age. The authors then chart out the correlation between patenting activity and economic growth at the individual state level.

The article makes some interesting determinations. Innovation thrived in densely populated areas where people could exchange ideas and places that were open to disruptive ideas were more innovative. In a broader context, the article provides an interesting look back and provides some context of what we can take from the past to foster innovation today.

This article, “50 Inspirational Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2017,” is particularly relevant given our recent class discussions about industries that are struggling despite doing everything right. We’ve compared and contrasted and general national framework of what is necessary for growth with the entrepreneurial framework for what is necessary for growth. This article aligns with those common discussion topics.

The article states: “There are an incredible number of people moving and shaking the existing global business environment. They’re doing this by disrupting industries that previously were starting to feel a bit stale to those in those industries or reliant on their products and services. These entrepreneurs’ passion is all about injecting excitement and enthusiasm into their industries by tackling many of the business- and consumer-focused issues that have yet to be solved.”

The article describes 50 entrepreneurs whose innovations align with Christensen’s depiction of “disruptive innovation.” Describing the entrepreneurial endeavors of Ekta Sahasi, for example, the vice president of the U.S. Business Innovation Center, the article states: “[H]er team seeks out new places to invest in disruptive technology that can advance the company’s competitive advantage.”

The article also focuses on cultural aspects of entrepreneurial innovation, which we discussed in depth after watching Poverty, Inc. Again speaking of Ekta Sahasi, for example, the article notes: “Sahasi helps startups understand how they can enter Asian markets and work within those cultural parameters.” This focus on “cultural parameters” is present in the majority of entrepreneurs listed, reiterating our class discussion that success is most likely when entrepreneurs truly understand the mission of their work and are a part of the very system that they are trying to change.

Also notable is that many of the entrepreneurs listed are involved in more than one company. For example, the article states of Roger Bryan: “Bryan is a serial entrepreneur with two successful exits: a marketing agency and an ecommerce business.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, given that we’ve often discussed and blogged about articles stating that the best entrepreneurs are those who “do what they know,” it seems like there is overlap between the multiple companies where a single entrepreneur takes on responsibility. For example, the above example of Roger Bryan shows that the two different companies may require similar knowledge, as marketing it a part of ecommerce.

Finally, many of the entrepreneurs listed are social entrepreneurs—and many draw on their own experiences in creating their mission. Perhaps most striking is Annie Lobert. The article states of Lobert: “Lobert is founder of Hookers for Jesus, which helps women like the founder, who herself was a victim of sex trafficking and became a drug addict, struggling to survive. The organization provides programs to help women get off the street and away from sex trafficking by offering counseling, support and a way to heal from these traumatic experiences.” Her path to social entrepreneurship is very personally connected to her background.

Not only is it fascinating to read about these entrepreneurs’ very different paths to success, but it is also interesting to see that the article’s insight into these different individuals overlaps with our class conversations and blog.

This article strikes me as innovative way to make a profit on very little monetary inputs. Love finding things like this.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290031

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290157