Business

Young women and girls have been charged to take advantage of the benefits of ICT to grow their businesses through sustainable and pragmatic economic solutions, rather than just for socializing....

President/Founder, Ideas.Africa Mrs. Lolia Emakpore, gave the charge in Abuja at the second edition of Women and Girls Empowerment and Mentoring (WOGEM’16) an Entrepreneurship Empowerment Programme (EEP) held on the theme “Making of The Smart Woman Entrepreneur: unleashing the potentials of women and girls-empowerment for lifestyle transformation.

According to Emakpore, the world is undergoing a paradigm shift in many aspects, particularly in the area of communication in business catalysed by technology, urging women to take advantage of this and optimize the opportunities presented, for am improved lifestyle.

She noted the contribution of women to both social and economic development, lamenting however that most of these contributions have not been recognized and accorded the commensurate opportunity to excel.

“Ideas.Africa shares in the global initiative of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and joins in the conversation.

“We call on governments, organisations, private sector and well-meaning persons to increase efforts in this laudable drive at sustainable development for women and girls, particularly the vulnerable,” she stressed.

In her keynote address the Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Professor Joy Ogwu, emphasized the need for men to support women to enable them thrive in their chosen career.

Prof. Ogwu described empowerment as an enabling tooling of an individual to succeed in making full use of his/her skills to help themselves as well as acquire and contribute to the society.

She maintained that men alone cannot achieve the SDG’s, stressing that any society that ignores her women who occupies half the population is losing half of the productivity the women would have added to the nations’s development.

“Any nation who ignores women run on one foot. I urge you all to see yourself as a strategic asset who can make valid contribution to the development of the country,” she said.

The National Coordinator for ICT, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the National Information Technology Development Agency Mr. Olayinka Adejube, noted that the empowerment of women is critical to national development, adding that women are 50% of the country’s population and so their contribution to national development is paramount.