SMEDAN, Korea, UNDP Break Ground on $12m Abuja Entrepreneurship Centre
The Federal Government has unveiled a new US$12 million entrepreneurship and innovation centre in Abuja as part of efforts to strengthen the pipeline from skills development and job creation to enterprise growth, innovation and investment for young Nigerians.
The Abuja Centre for Entrepreneurship (ACE), funded by the Republic of Korea through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), is being developed by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The groundbreaking ceremony was held on Thursday at SMEDAN’s Idu Industrial Development Centre in Abuja, marking the transition of the project from planning and preparation to physical construction.
Speaking at the ceremony on behalf of Vice President Kashim Shettima, the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Senator Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, said the Centre should be viewed not merely as a building but as part of a wider national ecosystem connecting skills, employment, entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise growth.
He said the objective of government interventions should go beyond training Nigerians to creating pathways through which skills translate into jobs, jobs into enterprises and enterprises into broader economic growth.
“The objective cannot simply be to train more people. We must create pathways through which skills lead to jobs, jobs lead to enterprise, and enterprise drives economic growth,” Hadejia said.
He said ACE was coming at a critical time, noting that Nigeria’s youthful population represented a major economic asset if matched with the skills, infrastructure, finance, opportunities and markets required for productive participation in the economy.
According to him, the Centre has the potential to serve entrepreneurs and MSMEs across the Federal Capital Territory and the wider Northern region by connecting them with universities, financial institutions, technology companies, incubators, development partners and the private sector.
Hadejia also linked ACE to other government-backed interventions, including the Skills and Industry Alignment Roundtables, the Nigeria Jubilee Fellows Programme (NJFP), Expanded MSME Clinics and the Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) initiative.
He said the programmes addressed different components of the same national challenge of building a workforce and enterprise ecosystem capable of supporting sustainable economic growth.
“Skills. Jobs. Enterprise. Innovation. Growth. And this is where the Abuja Centre for Entrepreneurship fits,” he said.
The Deputy Chief of Staff urged the project partners to begin building the pipeline of entrepreneurs and businesses that would occupy the facility even before construction is completed.
“By the time this facility is completed, we should not be starting from zero. We should already have entrepreneurs ready for incubation, businesses ready to scale, institutional partners ready to collaborate and pathways to finance and markets ready to support viable enterprises,” he said.
He added that the success of ACE should ultimately be measured by the entrepreneurs emerging from the facility, businesses expanding, innovations reaching the market, jobs created and opportunities opened to young Nigerians, women, persons with disabilities and other underserved groups.
Earlier, SMEDAN Director-General and Chief Executive Officer, Charles Odii, said the project was guided by the agency’s GROW Nigerian Strategy, which places skills development, access to finance and markets, and productive infrastructure at the centre of enterprise development.
“We have made skills development, access to finance and markets, and productive infrastructure central to fulfilling our mandate to build the enterprises that will carry this economy forward,” Odii said.
He said ACE would provide entrepreneurs with access to workspaces and specialist facilities that many would struggle to provide independently, adding that the partnership with KOICA and UNDP would strengthen SMEDAN’s capacity to deliver enterprise support at scale.
UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, Elsie Attafuah, said the Centre would help translate Nigeria’s demographic potential into sustainable businesses and decent jobs.
Attafuah noted that more than 75 million Nigerians are aged between 15 and 35, but said young people and MSMEs continue to face barriers including limited access to finance, digital infrastructure, business support and appropriate innovation spaces.
She said UNDP’s involvement in ACE was about more than supporting a physical facility, but about working with Nigerian institutions to create an environment where people could turn their capabilities and ideas into productive opportunities.
She recalled that UNDP had in 2024 supported the solarisation of SMEDAN’s Common Facility Centre at Idu through a 120 KVA solar-powered mini-grid, describing it as a practical investment in productive infrastructure.
Country Director of KOICA Nigeria, Kim Eunsub, said the project represented a further investment in Nigeria’s innovation, entrepreneurship and MSME ecosystem and reflected Korea’s commitment to science, technology and innovation-led development.
“The Abuja Centre for Entrepreneurship is a concrete expression of the strong and growing partnership between Korea and Nigeria,” Eunsub said.
He said KOICA hoped the Centre would provide an environment where the creativity and entrepreneurial potential of young Nigerians could be transformed into innovation, businesses and employment opportunities.
ACE is expected to support 500 prospective young Nigerian entrepreneurs and 400 start-ups in sectors including FinTech, EdTech, HealthTech and AgriTech, as well as MSMEs from Abuja and surrounding cities, with wider indirect benefits across Nigeria.
The facility will include time-share offices, hot-desking areas, meeting rooms, training facilities and incubation spaces.
Its design incorporates accessibility for persons with disabilities and older persons, alongside gender-responsive features, including provision for crèche facilities.
The building will also incorporate green design principles, including renewable energy, low embodied-carbon technologies and locally sourced bio-renewable materials.
Beyond the physical infrastructure, the partners plan to develop an entrepreneurship ecosystem around ACE involving incubators, universities, financial institutions, private-sector organisations and entrepreneur networks.
A planned ACE Incubation Pipeline will enable partner incubators and universities to run affiliated programmes during construction and contribute to the Centre’s first intake when it becomes operational.
The Centre is also expected to connect entrepreneurs with government and private-sector institutions working in areas such as business registration, digital innovation, skills development, investment, export promotion, finance and enterprise support.
The project brings together SMEDAN’s institutional mandate and reach within Nigeria’s MSME ecosystem, KOICA’s development cooperation and investment capacity, and UNDP’s technical and development implementation expertise.
Hadejia said the broader Nigeria-UNDP partnership had already demonstrated the value of creating practical pathways for young Nigerians into the world of work through programmes such as NJFP, while cooperation was also expanding into innovation and digital capability.
He cited the planned national rollout of University Innovation Pods as another effort to strengthen infrastructure for innovation and digital skills.
He said ACE would provide an additional link by creating a platform where skills, ideas and innovation could be converted into viable enterprises.
The project contributes to Sustainable Development Goals 4, 8, 9 and 17 and supports Nigeria’s MSME and start-up policy frameworks as well as the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2023–2027.
The groundbreaking ceremony brought together senior government officials, development partners, private-sector representatives, financial institutions, innovation hubs, universities, entrepreneurs, and representatives of women and persons with disabilities.
With construction now commencing, SMEDAN, KOICA and UNDP are expected to focus on developing the partnerships, programmes and entrepreneur pipeline required to ensure that the Centre becomes operational as an active platform for innovation, enterprise development, investment and job creation.
