How LSETF’s interventions created 89,678 jobs in 3 years

The Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) has presented a social impact assessment report of its entrepreneurship programmes, which showed that its interventions have created not less than 89,678 jobs in the last three years.

The Impact Assessment Exercise carried out with support from Ford Foundation, measured the achievements of the Fund’s interventions, documented the lessons learnt, and made recommendations on how to enhance the Fund’s performance in future.

The report titled, ‘LSETF Impact: Progress and Lessons’, was presented during the week in Lagos State, indicated that 7,817 MSMEs have been funded by the LSETF under its MSME Loan Programme.

The breakdown of the report also showed that 89per cent of businesses have been able to pay back loans solely from business income and profits, while 70 per cent of beneficiaries who were unable to access funding before the LSETF intervention recorded positive improvement.

The social impact assessment further indicated that 70 per cent of the beneficiaries hired at least one person, even as 89 per cent of small businesses which benefited from the LSETF loans have been able to pay back the loans chiefly from the business income and profits.

It is, however, worthy of note that 72 per cent of the MSMEs who benefited from the LSETF loans reported a positive impact on their business growth and personal life.

For instance, female beneficiaries are able to support an average of five dependents each, while their male counterparts support an average of four, which means that about 8,000 loan beneficiaries are responsible for at least 40,000 persons.

The report further revealed that 75 entrepreneurs in the technology and innovation space were impacted by the LSETF’s Lagos Innovates workspace voucher programme which led to the creation of 2,125 direct and indirect jobs.

Meanwhile, 76 per cent of the Lagos Innovates beneficiaries are ready to pitch to investors for additional funding.

Commenting on the results of the report, the Executive Secretary of the LSETF, Mr Akintunde Oyebode said; “I am very pleased that Ford Foundation partnered with us to carry out this independent assessment of the impact of the LSETF initiative and its operations.

The outcome has been very insightful and has thrown up indicators to areas that need improvement.

At LSETF, we believe it is important to measure impact, to ensure we improve the benefit received from the public and private capital entrusted to us.

By providing this body of work, we also hope that other institutions within and outside Nigeria, learn from our experience, and are able to design even better programmes to put people in jobs.”

In his remarks at the forum, the Regional Director, Ford Foundation, Mr Innocent Chukwuma said; “It is impressive that the LSETF as an agency of the Government has done a laudable job even in the face of growing scepticism of the impact of special programmes by the government to solve social problems.

It is important that an agency created few years ago has decided to embark on what is usually not the norm, to check how it has performed and the lessons learnt in other to make future plans. This should be a model for other states and government agencies across the federation”, Mr Chukwuma said.