JUNE 27, 2025, marks the 9th annual International MSME (micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise) Day. Adopted on April 6, 2017, by the United Nations General Assembly, the day is aimed at raising awareness of the tremendous contribution small businesses make to sustainable, inclusive, and resilient economic growth. 

As the world marks this year’s celebration today with the theme ‘Business for MSMEs – Connecting the Entrepreneurs’, the president of the Association of Small Business Owners of Nigeria (ASBON), Femi Egbesola, shares his thoughts, in this interview with The ICIR, on how stakeholders should celebrate and why government should institutionalise the day. Excerpts:

The ICIR: What should the International MSME Day signify for enterprises in Nigeria?

Egbesola: The International MSME Day should be a time where MSMEs will have time to reflect and to strategise about better ways of doing business, particularly in these challenging times. As you know, the MSMEs have suffered a lot because of the current economic hardship. The sector has suffered so much that over two million businesses are said to have closed shop over time.

I think it’s time we begin to reflect on the challenges the sector faced. We should also use the opportunity to renew our commitments to continue to improve businesses in that sector. I see it as a time to celebrate our resilience and contribution to Nigeria.

These are the things that it should mean for us.  Unfortunately, Nigeria is not celebrating the MSME Day as it should; attention is not paid to it as we do to other seemingly less important things in Nigeria.

The ICIR: Do you think we’re utilising the MSME Day to create awareness of its contributions to the Nigerian economy, as the UN expects it to be?

Egbesola: For me, we are not creating enough awareness. While we have pockets or isolated programmes and events that celebrate the MSME Day, generally, the celebration has been in a low-key manner. I think the day should be used to celebrate MSMEs, to commend them for what they are doing, for employing as much as 87 per cent of the workforce in the country, and having 92 per cent of the entire business space.

I think that’s worth the commendation and celebration. It should also be a day where we should have national dialogues hosted by governments in all strata, both national and sub-national, to talk about the private sector and look at how MSMEs are contributing to the national growth and the economic growth. I think it’s also a time for the government to roll out national data and reports on MSMEs’ economic contributions that we are not seeing now.

It’s also good to see the media coming up to celebrate MSMEs. The media has been playing a key role in a lot of celebrations, and the MSME celebration should also be part of what should be in their calendar. I’m happy that this interview is coming up today, and we are talking about it. But, I expect that all social media platforms should also mark the day in their calendar, and celebrate it more than what we have now.

You can imagine if all the platforms we have – the social media, the print, the television, and radio – are all coming together on June 27 to celebrate the same thing. You can imagine the kind of awareness, visibility, and the kind of push or inspiration the MSMEs will get from social innovations.

The ICIR: Apart from the government bringing up stakeholder engagement, what other role should it play to create this awareness?

Egbesola: We would’ve loved governments to, first of all, institute what we call National MSME Week to celebrate MSMEs. Yes, we have an award programme tied to that week by the Federal Government at the moment, but even at that, this kind of award should not be at the centre only. We expect every state government to have MSME Honours or Award Nights during that week, particularly on that day.

We also expect that there should be a state-led celebration of clusters of MSMEs. We have a lot of clusters – business membership organisations and associations. There should be a situation where they will be brought together, and we’ll all celebrate it together. It’s supposed to be a time when there will be what we call public-private dialogue between the MSME, particularly stakeholders in the MSME ecosystem, with the government to dissect issues, challenges facing MSMEs, and come up with a communique action plan that will work towards resolving the challenges of MSMEs.

It should also be a time where we begin to look at policies that relate to MSMEs, particularly policies that will enable and support businesses, and ease of doing business. These are some of the things that we feel should be done during MSME Day, not only at the national level but also at the sub-national level.

The ICIR: How should the various bodies and associations in the MSME sector drive this awareness?

Egbesola: Associations, too, should also collaborate with the media to tell their stories. That is what we are doing in our association [Association of Small Business Owners in Nigeria]. During the MSME week, we always look at how we can celebrate MSMEs more; how we can tell our own stories and use them to issue press releases.

It’s also a time for us to organise many of our events, trainings, and expos. For us in ASBON, we have that coming up next week. We call it the Annual MSME Conference to celebrate MSME Day. That we have been doing every year; this is the sixth edition. That’s what we’re expecting other associations to do.

We cannot wait for people to come and blow our trumpet for us. We can always blow it ourselves, and that’s how associations should look at supporting MSMEs. We’re holding a Podcast this year and also collaborating with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG)for the MSME Day to celebrate the day.

We also use it to incentivise our members to celebrate the day in their small way. One way is by telling them to hang the theme of this year’s celebration in their offices, stores, shops, or wherever they are doing business, so that everybody coming into that environment would know that there’s a celebration going on and that it’s a business for MSMEs connecting the entrepreneurs.

The ICIR: What do you make of this year’s theme, ‘Business for MSMEs – Connecting the Entrepreneurs’? 

Egbesola: I think it’s one of the most fitting themes that has ever come to play when it comes to celebrating MSME Day. The time has come when we have to realise that we can’t continue to do things on our own. It’s time to network, collaborate, partner, and connect. That’s where we can survive as MSMEs. When it comes to connection at this time, it’s not only to connect to the government but also to the market, investors, collaborators, regulatory bodies, customers, and all of them. It’s a time to make a lot of connections, and these connections can always be leveraged with technology.

So, this year’s theme is very fitting, and I think we need that in the MSME ecosystem this time around. There’s a need for us to connect to everything that can support and help our institution to grow. Also, it’s a time for us to start using it to connect with large corporations, many of whose value chains have MSMEs working there. This kind of handshake with large corporations has to be intentional, and I think this theme for the year should be able to address that.

The ICIR: What support do you think should come from the UN to make this day worthwhile in subsequent celebrations?

Egbesola: I think what we should all do, starting from our international to our local scene, is to look at how we can institutionalise that day. It has to be all-inclusive. We must institutionalise it. It can start by engaging the schools, creating awareness about entrepreneurship, inspiring students to become future entrepreneurs, and, like I mentioned earlier, having a National MSME Week whereby we can outline activities for celebrating the day, featuring various programmes like quiz competition, dialogue, product showcase, and all of that.

It’s also good for us to publish data that contains how well or otherwise the MSMEs are doing, and develop whitepapers on that. It’s also good for us to look at how we can have dialogue platforms, policy townhall meetings, to create a dialogue between the MSMEs and the policymakers.

It’s also good to begin to look at how the states can localise this celebration and where local governments will begin to participate. I think if we have a coordinated national framework, the MSME Day could become equivalent to every other celebration, for example, our Independence Day. That’s how it should be because we’re the backbone of the economy, and I think we need to be celebrated, appreciated, and supported.