What We Do
Economic Empowerment
Microenterprise training, seed capital and business mentoring so families can build durable income.
We help low-income families move from subsistence to steady earnings by combining practical business training with the small amounts of capital and mentoring that turn an idea into a working enterprise.
Background
- It’s a vicious cycle. Overwhelming poverty exacerbates Africa’s most pressing problems – massive unemployment, HIV/AIDS, conflict, lack of health care, clean water and sanitation.
- These problems in turn lead to even more poverty. ACBF works on empowerment projects that attack and eradicate poverty from the root.
Implications
- Poverty leads to hopelessness.
- The results of widespread poverty range from premature motherhood and prostitution to exploitation of children and recruitment into insurgent groups.
ACBF’s Focus
- 80% of Nigerian youths are without jobs. Unemployment among youth presents an ongoing threat to the stability of Nigerian communities.
- In partnership with Nigeria’s Federal Development & Finance Group (represented by the Central Bank of Nigeria) ACBF established and manages the Entrepreneurial Development Center (EDC) program for Nigeria’s North Central geo-political zone.
Successes
- Since 2013, ACBF has trained over 4,000 young men and women complete skills training preparing them to start their own businesses and/or competently enter the workforce.
- Ground-breaking for a second EDC is scheduled for Fall 2014.
- Our Chairman, Professor Humphrey Nwosu saw the students’ need for start up capital and answered the call personally by launching the Professor Nwosu Empowerment Grants in 2014.
How the program works
- Microenterprise and bookkeeping training for first-time business owners
- Seed capital and savings groups run by community members
- Ongoing mentoring so new businesses survive their first years
- Market linkages that connect producers with reliable buyers
What changes
Households that can pay school fees, absorb a bad harvest and reinvest in their own growth.