Gender and Skills Development in Nigeria

I am Mrs. Happiness Chijiago Boms, Bless with 2 Lovely Kids, Citizen of Nigeria, in  Port Harcourt Local Government Area of Rivers State.

I am a graduate, and I have  Post graduate Diploma in Business Studies, Faculty of Management, Rivers State University of Science and Technology Nigeria 2006.  Master’s Degree Program in View.

Presently, the Co-Founder/Executive Director of Greene Happy Home Care, Registered Organisation. 

I have work with various sectors and held a management positions, includes Women & Youth Leader, Project Director, Human Resource Manager, Administrative Officer, Secretarial Management.

Kindly visit the website activites on social media details:   https://web.facebook.com/www.ghhcare/

Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/happykboms

Linked in Profile: https://ng.linkedin.com/in/happiness-c-boms-36215063   

Technology’s development youthtube video: https://youtu.be/ttHLHrR8KxA

https://youtu.be/iNGHQMrhd5I

Research Media Interview of Previous Work:  https://youtu.be/CEo7F7A2r98  https://youtu.be/BmfJWOAMJOw  

https://youtu.be/FEj7EMa1Mc0   https://youtu.be/nVYfvw3aBxE 

https://youtu.be/HehONQvH8x   

www.120under40.org/nominee/happiness-chijiago-boms

•  Alumni, of Women Lead Institute Plan international USA, 
• Member International centre, She Trades in the Commonwealth, 
• Member of She Lead African, She means Business Women Nigeria

The digital revolution: E-agriculture involves designing, developing and applying innovative ways to information and communication technologies  in the rural domain, with a primary focus on agriculture, fisheries, forestry and livestock.

The aim is to boost agricultural and rural development by improving access to valuable information that can help people's livelihoods depend on agriculture product and sustainable manner.  

Digital technology is a  needs assessment for women to practices, business and the technical infrastructure community development, Revenue collection, reconciliation accounting and distribution processes to  Cash transactions, out of balance. Manual revenue collection, using unsecured cash drawers, is prone to errors and weak financial controls, as start-up capital. Many of the enabling factors for training are particularly lacking for women  Access to credit. Its difficulty in accessing credit  and it hinders the development of smallholder agriculture and business. This problem is worse for women because they lack collateral, such as land, and Finances.

I provide leadership & Capacity Building, Soft skills Training and Development for entrepreneurs and business opportunities, contributing to strategic planing,  seeking  to maximum the potential opportunities that are in line with empowerment possibilities. 

Engage local youth girls and young women in farmer training, Entrepreneurs development training and digital technology Advancement program. Train them intensively on range of aspects (technical, soft-skills, use of data for internet online marketing, social media and networking etc.) 

Create standards for quality control and monitor performance (eligibility criteria for becoming service delivery channel, minimum service delivery quality standards and code of conduct in dealing with farmers)

I review the initiatives base of my expertise and experience engaged in Wire Life Tech Program, skills acquisition for women development.

I maintain an open communication system in various communities with women group, Advocacy, and media show for gender Justice with The International Federation Women Lawyer FIDA Nigeria, Rivers State branch, and the Nigeria Television Authority You and I shows. 

Eco System Health care service collaborating with Community Health Centre, which has been much gainful and great achievement to women in the society and during the covid 19 pandemic. 

It uses technology to access financial translation services. 
Furthermore, credit and asset transfers have been found to have a greater impact on households when granted to women. Programme evaluations in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Africa identified that: credit and transfers in the hands of women result in greater spending on children’s human capital, improved health and nutrition for boys and girls, and increased access to formal health care for women. (World Bank, 2007b:1) 

This resulted in disillusionment with schemes, which can be aggravated by approaches to administering repayments. This resulted in some confiscation or forced liquidation of farm assets to meet repayments, thus reinforcing a cycle of poverty. Improving access to credit for women smallholders project, therefore an important step towards enabling to apply point of sales (POS) training.  The review of practice looked at what can be learned about how to do this from past projects.   

The structure of credit schemes is an important factor in addressing development potential for initiatives. When granted to women, credit and asset transfers have a greater positive impact on households and families.  Capital and land ownership are important, and Good infrastructure is needed to increase access to market, thereby minimising transaction costs. 

Strategies for improving access to POS credit reviewed of practice provide further evidence that credit can allow farmers to gain improved access to income and market sales rural community. 

Addressing the challenge of credit access among women is thus an important complement to technical training. Additionally, training that improves financial literacy may also be complementary to agricultural training because of its impact on access to credit.  Its aim is to investigate the interactions between credit facilities and training, and to highlight successful instances where training has taken account of credit constraints or helped improve access to credit and economic impact of technology by improving its relevance and appropriateness to the potential beneficiaries, thereby increasing the number of potential adopters,  more likely to meet community needs. 

The gender dimension of technology development of women Training needs to take into account women’s different technological needs and production preferences.  

 As women change their attitudes towards production, and develop a more businesslike approach towards their activities, they become more willing to invest in new technologies. 

 Providing some level of ownership for the women in identifying new technology and feeding into the development process ultimately results in greater take-up of technology. 

Work with digital technology and Network demand, its expected to be consistent with the current financial transactions application. There may be a small increase in amount of data per transaction to handle additional financial information; although its  performed locally within the POS hardware (based on type of POS hardware that is purchased). 

A new POS system would be designed to meet current and future needs, such as providing the ability to add new services and interfacing with the state enterprise financial accounting system (Statewide Human Resources, Accounting, and Management Reporting System). Project Start Date as soon as funding is released. 

Women need Point of Sales Services, to access Agricultural and enterprise skills for women smallholders in the rural community.Lack of Banking hall in the rural community need, in attempted to address the issue of capital and land ownership, but initiating the cultural shifts to accompany these changes is fraught with issues. A number of projects noted that when women’s income increased, they were unable to retain ownership of the capital they accumulated. Self-help groups have been used as a positive way to build up capital within women-only groups, leading to greater income generation potential for women. Rural infrastructure is another important consideration in the effectiveness and utilisation of agricultural and enterprise on POS training.  In many cases, the high travel costs faced by women to access Bank from rural area to near by city is far distance, alongside the unreliability of transport, means that the benefits from existing market access are limited, due to the uncertainty in transporting perishable goods. Lateness to market can impact on the quality of goods, meaning lower prices and less income for farmers gain impacts on their opportunities for enterprise Equally, a lack of infrastructure for basic amenities increases the time spent on household activities. 

I am passionate about this project because it address Women entrepreneurs business training,on technology uses for transaction, credit and debit aspect, to banking. Rural women would greatly benefit from public or community investments, women’s participation increased when committee meetings, come up women are comfortable in speaking up, unlike in village meetings, which were usually monopolised by the men. This project highlighted the potential for enterprise and agricultural small farmer training to have a positive impact on the local infrastructure. This project will increase women income led to improved housing and amenities, also provided evidence for this: The project introduced a new mind-set, which led many groups to broaden their field activities. By branching out beyond savings and credit, the groups initiated community-oriented projects and negotiated with and obtained the approval of the bank authorities for, impact of rural infrastructure on women’s ability to apply both in market value chain, agricultural and enterprise  clearly large.  Its examines how training can take this into account, and looks at examples where training has helped communities work towards the improvement of the infrastructure itself.  Infrastructure is thus crucial for making training effective for smallholders farmers, girls who has drop education,to increase their income significantly. 

I believe that this project is implemented, monitoring and impact assessment essential to ensure success and may identify attractive refinancing options.  In each stage of project development involves specialised skills and expertise with experience to collaborate with me to deliver a successful project and may require engagement by a range of different actors such as: 

commercial banks, private equity or venture capital investors, industrial or technology companies position to invest time, talent in delivery this project, income-generating activities to build business and household income support economic recovery after global shocks.

This project solve problem for women access to transaction and the beneficial targeted support women from the rural development community  and strength the financial in economical development, Its strengthen the capacity of key business leaders from one community to another, development nation and ensuring that the policy regulatory environment supports the long-term financial viability of the investment. Financial structuring depends on the cost of capital as well as input prices, depending on market conditions. In energy investments, technology prices over time represent an important variable change. 

Sustainable infrastructure can carry a higher upfront cost, and because the technologies and platforms are often newer, the risk is often perceived to be much higher. In order to make them an attractive proposition, investors can mitigate the risks through risk-sharing  cost allocation. In addition, while returns from sustainable infrastructure can be low relative to other investing options, better models to capture the positive returns from the lower total lifetime costs that sustainability implies

Sustainable infrastructure carry a higher upfront cost, and because technologies and platforms are often newer, In addition, its return sustainable infrastructure can be low relative to other investing options, better models to capture the positive returns from the lower total lifetime costs that sustainability implies, such as through enhanced resilience, lower operational costs. 

My ability to overcome adversity are Team work, collectively improve incentives  investment and innovation, and to generate income that can be redirected, to support the rural poor community. Team work strengthen policy frameworks and  capacities to deliver the right policies and enabling conditions for investment, Its build digital technology development and sustainable projects, to reduce high development and transaction costs, and to attract private investment. Its transform the financial system to deliver the scale and quality of investment needed in order to augment financing from of all sources enhance the accessibility of more sustainable technologies. Its provide an overview of each area of the report across-cutting area, and then the final three sections apply the other remaining action areas to the specific contexts of energy, cities and land use.

Its the Key project member contingency Plan to Communication and awareness of each team member tasks and responsibilities

Past experience and leadership potential are ability to plan, acquire capital and gain a strong foothold in the bank, ability to produce efficiently cash enable services in financial stock access to financial liquidity was essential due to the high cost of producing capital investment. However, the banks did offer the potential of obtaining a more substantial point of sales service. 

Responsibilities include:

• Champion the project.
• Consider potential changes facing the organization and assess the impact
• Decide which changes will be first to budges, communicate priorities and provide resources to ensure success
• Responsible for creating an environment that enables changes to be made on time and within budget.
• Participate in planning sessions
• Ultimate project responsibility

The project schedule, assigned tasks, resources and coordinate the resources, team development; Quality Assurance; Select subcontractors; Distribute Information; Work the plan. 

The strategic direction is to select and implement a Point of Sale (POS) solution using a Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software product that has demonstrated its effectiveness in the marketplace.  Using a package strategy rather than a custom development strategy has been proven effective in many situations, and is a common strategy in both the private and public sectors. 

Economic Impact

Opportunities for women: We want to help create a fairer, more inclusive world in which every woman and girl can create the kind of life she wishes to lead, unconstrained by harmful norms and stereotypes. We believe a world where women are economically empowered will be a fairer, happier and more prosperous place to live for everybody, business will flourish. We want to help create a more inclusive, prosperous and gender-equal world, in which no one is left behind, regardless of gender, age, race or ability.

Empowering and including women throughout our value chain is a vital part of this ambition, because at the moment, women are still far from achieving social, economic and political equality. In fact, at the current rate of progress, women will have to wait nearly 100 years to close the overall gender gap with men. We have the opportunity to be the last generation that has to fight this inequality. We want our business to be a leading force in closing the gender gap, and challenge, change in the harmful norms and stereotypes that are a barrier to women’s economic empowerment – and stereotypes.

Transforming societies, and our business: Empowering women will transform individual lives, societies and our business. It’s essential to the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), empowering women and girls is the specific focus of SDG 5, Achieving Gender Equality. Its aim to improve access to skills and employment and the resulting economic empowerment, transformed by achieving gender equality.  

Empowering women, empowering everyone: In the same way that women's empowerment connects all the SDGs, enhancing opportunities for women is combination of training programmes to enable women accumulate a portfolio of skills that enables them to extend the gain from training into the future Business.

Projects should ensure that training addresses both short-term and long-term needs. The lead time for implementing larger-scale production methods in poor rural areas should explicitly be taken into account when designing training. Skills for immediate and medium-term use should be combined with longer-term skills. 

Creating diverse and inclusive workplaces. Ensuring women and girls are safe, and their human rights are respected. Including more women financially, and supporting women farmers to farm more sustainably. Empowering women through our brands. Closing the gap in skills, including digital skills.

All these elements, and more, help drive our business. To achieve these aims, we need to understand the barriers that can hold women back, and find ways to overcome them. That means putting a gender lens on our programmes when we design and implement them.

Our strategy: We believe that women’s empowerment is the single greatest enabler of human development and economic growth. When women are guaranteed equal rights, skills and access to opportunities – and when the norms and stereotypes that hold women back are challenged and overcome – the effect is transformation. It benefits whole societies as well as individuals and their families – and it benefits our business.

for both immediate response to short term and long-term recovery – need to be designed and implemented with a gender lens. This includes removal of barriers that prevent full involvement of women in economic activities, equal pay and equal opportunities, social protection schemes that factor in existing biases, financing for women entrepreneurs and mechanisms to promote women’s self-employment. Such economic responses would include both the public and private spheres. 

Equally, narrowing gender-based education gaps and ensuring women remain in and expand their participation in the formal labour market will play a significant role in providing many economies with the capacity to ‘rebound’ stronger, more equitable and sustainable growth.

Unlocking potential across our value chain: We have a great opportunity to help create this vision in society at large. Building Capacity for 1000 unempoly women in rural areas with Agri-tech training transformation that create opportunities for women in supply chain, throu social media network.

In our 2018,  we outlined how this approach across the value chain aims to:

• build 50 gender-balanced organisation with a focus on management, Education and Technology Development.
• promote 500 safety for women in the communities where we operate, in developing their skill on agriculture, food industrial in local areas
• enhance access to 50 women computer training and Fin-tech, and Digital skills empowerment scheme.
• expand youth -girls opportunities in creatives and beauty industries, in retail value chain
• We work at a systemic level to challenge outdated gender norms and stereotypes.

Promoting safety for women & girls

Women have the right to be free from violence, harassment and discrimination. Promoting safety for women and girls is a moral imperative, and it is key to women fulfilling their potential as individuals and as contributors to work, communities and economies. Empowering women is also a vital component in strategic activities in areas including Health & hygiene − through initiatives such as Lifebuoy soap hand washing campaigns for the covid 19 pandemic, this is  Fairness in the workplace within, our business. We’re enhancing access to training and skills for women in our agricultural supply chain via our Enhancing Livelihoods Fund for seeds and livestock, empowerment opportunities and strategic activities.

GOAL STATEMENT

Our approach to empowering women is based on the tripod of rights, skills and opportunities. Women’s rights must be respected and women need to be given the skills and opportunities to succeed, ,by advancing opportunities for women in our operations; promoting safety; providing up-skills and Wealth creation job opportunities, and to  ensure that all barriers hindering women’s full rights and enjoyment to equality,  are completely removed. 

• Ensure that women reach their full participation in economic management as well as contributing meaningfully to national development, access to economic resources, business development services, and  increase women social  economic growth and participation in decision making in the society.

• Cutting-edge to software technology to benefit farmers networking and Human cantered designs for all sort of Beauty and Fashion Industries.
• Improving Women Learning Skills and the opportunities of entrepreneurship within the various value market chains.
• Create strategy that promotes gender equality and empowering women economically 
• Advancing women in the next generation with special skills, and Sustainable farming shared digital knowledge in the society.
• We promote the dignity of women and their self-esteem through public enlightenment programs, seminars, and workshops, which bring the activities of a product or service to its end markets within the value chains, for the local area.
• We have improved our gender balance, with the proportion of female Entrepreneurs,Business managers reaching 51% (50.7%) in 2019. In partnership with others, by 2021 we had enabled women to access initiatives aiming to promote their safety, develop their skills and  expand their opportunities.

While women will step in to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, the unpaid labor they provide is not infinitely elastic.  Without adequate support, the long-term costs of stretching women’s work to patch up the holes in social protection and public services provision can be enormous. Decisions on investments now will have tangible impacts later.

 Reducing the risks of applying training Lack of credit and capital, insecure land tenure and inadequate rural infrastructure make the application of new agricultural and enterprise strategies risky for women smallholders. 

Training women play an important role in mitigating these risks by facilitating access to credit, helping women manage capital, working towards more secure land tenure, and helping women lobby local government for the provision of better infrastructure. Lack of access to credit is often more severe for women as they lack collateral. A group approach ensures that there is a collective responsibility for loans and reduces the individual risks.  

Build capacity Projects play a valuable role in facilitating credit access for groups. It is important, however, that the initiative and responsibility for ensuring repayment remains with the group, as this is a key factor in ensuring the sustainability of credit access beyond the lifetime of a project.  

Projects help women groups to become more credit worthy by supporting prosperous formation, and providing and  Systematic approaches to ensuring access: Project staff officers need to be equipped to collect accurate information about women’s productive practices, constraints, preferences, and apply this information to their work and training agendas. 

Women groups are also able to overcome other social barriers such as caste and religion, and prevent these becoming barriers to changes. These changes are, however, slow. Pressing for better government services and more training. 

Confidence building and training explicitly designed to enable women to articulate their needs at local government level, accompanied by formal links between groups for maximum effectiveness. 

Training in group management and group formation can improve groups’ sustainability. Training in communication and conflict management can make groups more stable, less likely to disintegrate, and able to take disciplinary action without breaking down. Record keeping can improve trust and transparency within the group. 

Training to support women group organisation that formed for the purposes of mutual support, as opposed to simply accessing credit, were more likely to operate successfully and have a better chance of ultimately becoming sustainable. Gender-sensitisation is usually more effective if it works with community values. Structures for women to articulate training needs 

 An integrated, decentralised and holistic project approach is necessary to ensure that activities address the specific needs of women within a community. A centralised approach limits the targeted group’s opportunities to articulate their needs, Addressing the gender dimensions of training area.

The ability of a group to increase the number of women trained depends heavily on how cohesive and well-formed, and Helping projects to reach the poorest rural area. In terms of poverty reduction to be overlooked, It help spread training more widely, rather than concentrating it within the community. 

Participation and partnership in technology development, Participation can positively affect the adoption and economic impact of technology by improving its relevance and appropriateness to the potential beneficiaries, thereby increasing the number of potential adopters. 

The earlier in project development that participation is incorporated, the more likely they are to meet community needs. Training needs to take into account women’s different technological needs and production preferences. 

There is a need to engage a greater number of women in agricultural research, which requires encouraging the participation of women from primary education through to tertiary studies. Challenges in creating participation, As women change their attitudes towards production, and develop a more businesslike approach towards their activities, they become more willing to invest in new technologies. 

Partnering with Mrs. Nnenna  Igbokwe, Vice president/Chairman International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Nigeria, Rivers State Branch, in collaborating for leadership for women and girls right  children  protection, essential to ensure women’s needs and rights are protected in Constitutional reforms and that women’s socio-economic empowerment, mental health, safety and security are taken seriously and addressed with financial commitments, A call to end  discrimination, abuse and violence  with women lawyers FIDA.

Partnering with Mrs. Chioma John, Director/Presenter of You & I, Nigeria Television Authority [NTA] show, promoting peace building on Gender TV show Program World Wide (NTA) Port Harcourt Chapter. Digital media tools provide new, creative ways for local peacebuilders to foster alternative discourses and challenge prevailing conflict narratives in Gender Equity .

Practical barriers to training 

The presence of a person in the village whom the women trust and can discuss their needs with plays an essential role in the project, helping the team to understand women’s roles and develop training that does not conflict with traditional roles. 

 Once women have bought into the project, scheduling becomes important. Advance notice of training times, and scheduling during less busy seasons and on non-work days can help. 

 Where the women were able to choose the timing of the training themselves, they had more ownership and commitment to the training, and were able to ensure that it fitted in with their productive activities. 

There is a need for initial capacity-building training to initiate change among the women. Improving understanding of what the project is offering is essential for creating commitment to attending training. Targeting women’s needs and interests directly.

Capacity Building for enabling environment for e-agriculture, which looked at initiatives using ICTs in agriculture across the world. It highlighted the seven critical factors of success for moving from pilot projects to a more sustainable approach.

Provide adapted and reliable content from trusted sources.

Develop capacities for three dimensions: the individual’s capacity, organizational capacity and the enabling environment. 

gender and diversity. 

Increase access and participation. 

Engage in partnerships, especially public-private. 

Identify the right mix of technologies. 

Ensure economic, social and environmental sustainability

National e-agriculture strategies, should seek to provide reliable and affordable connectivity and integrate ICTs in rural development to support food security and hunger eradication. 

 Training that helped women to engage successfully with larger markets was particularly valuable to help women profit from new enterprises.

Financial training that was directly applicable to their specific production activity helped women apply to principles practice. and delivering the training in local languages, provide time for application and important Integrating enterprise training with agricultural extension.

 Literacy training Providing functional literacy training was crucial to the success of community-based irrigation schemes in agricultural programme in West Africa. 

Enterprise training can help women increase their incomes and gain greater control over their businesses and finances by improving their confidence and recognition in a business context, enabling them to collect respond to market information, and integrating them into business.   

Marketing training cannot be separated from training to support quality control, capital management and price awareness. 

Both financial and marketing training need to be directly relevant to their enterprises for women smallholders Agriculture.

Partners involved in ICT processes and the development of applications for the initiative need to be aware of gender equality issues, and how to integrate them in the work they do. It is good to look into the gender awareness of every partner engaged in the initiative. Training in gender issues can be planned for the partner organisations to make sure that all parties are on the same wavelength. If the implementing partner is not gender sensitive, this can compromise the desired outcome of men and women benefiting equally from the initiatives. 
When setting in place ICT initiatives at community level, it is often easier to work with partners who already have ongoing and long-lasting relationships with the women targeted by the initiative, and who are trusted by members of the community. It is much more efficient to build on existing and well-functioning relationships.  New public-private partnerships can help to improve the availability of mobile service in rural areas,such as financial services. 

Employment of women extension agents: Greene Happy Home Care  Projects have also attempted to improve the relevance gender issues in  agricultural training for women and access to technology training in the use of Point of Sales mobile technology financial service, bringing savings accounts to ultra-poor female clients via mobile phone.

I am Interested in governments and donors agency, and I would like to partner with the United Nations women Economic Empowerment Team  and Global fund for Women, for my project detailed plan.