Majority of women in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) from Nakuru County are not aware of existing funding opportunities such as the county’s enterprise fund.
Many of them appeared pleasantly surprised that such funds have been available for a long time without the stakeholder’s knowledge.
According to County Director for Trade, Dorcas Njeri, the enterprise fund was established in collaboration with the Kenya Commercial Bank to enable, women, youth, and people living with disabilities to grow in business and create decent wealth.
The director was speaking today during a training forum for over 100 women with SMEs drawn from Nakuru Town East and Nakuru Town West constituencies, where she said there’s a need to provide knowledge, opportunities and capacity building to the women in SMEs on how to grow their businesses, especially access to affordable credit and record keeping.
Njeri said the training was aimed at providing knowledge on business development services, which include marketing and linkages for startups and struggling SMEs, from where a significant number of women from the informal settlement areas, are involved in hawking vegetables, selling mitumba and small-scale farming on the city’s outskirts.
Unfortunately, such women who are the majority cannot access county enterprise funds since they are not correctly registered and lack the capacity for the tedious registration process.
Nelly Kemboi, from Nakuru West, said her business of hawking traditional vegetables such as managu and sagetti, not only feeds her children but provides food and shelter.
However, if she was to register the business to access the enterprise funds, the payment for various licenses was likely to eat into her profits, hence she prefers it to remain informal.
By Veronica Bosibori
