Business
SMEDAN Awards Licences To 116 Service Providers
Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has awarded practising licences to 116 qualified Business Development Service Providers (BDSPs).
The Director-General, SMEDAN, Dr Charles Odii, said this at the BDSPs Licencing Award ceremony organised by the agency recently in Lagos.
Odii said the practise licence would allow BDSPs to provide quality services to the Micro Small and Medium–sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.
The Tide’s source reports that the BDSPs certification was in collaboration with Kaduna Business School, the Enterprise Development Centre, Pan Atlantic University
The BDSPs are Nigerians from the entrepreneurial ecosystem across the country with qualified requirements to practise their profession in a particular jurisdiction.
This typically involves completing a certain amount of education and training, passing an examination, and maintaining good moral standing.
Odii said: “Today is a very big day for us at the agency because we awarded licensces to business development service providers and this is very important, and a response to the cry of small businesses in Nigeria.
“Many of them have different problems, just like you have sick patients and you have doctors, a couple of certified individuals need to go through rudimentary process to become certified to be able to attend to sick individuals.
“We have a staggering statistics that show that 70 per cent of small businesses die in the first three years and there are many different reasons why they die.
“So, what we have done as an agency is that, we have recruited a couple of people, they have gone through a scholarly process of training from the Enterprise Development Centre and Kaduna Business School, and then they’ve gotten a certification and their licences then become our eyes and ears in all of Nigeria
“So, their job right now is to go into the market, help small businesses thrive.
“In an effort to ensure a credible access to more affordable finance for MSMEs in Nigeria, the agency is partnering with an NGO, The African Centre for Global Entrepreneurial Leadership.
“This is to implement the Leadership Entrepreneurial Game Show, where successful participants will be given N5 million worth of grants and tools.
“The game show is on-going now and all existing and potential entrepreneurs are encouraged to log into www.legs.afrca for registration”, he said.
Odii hinted that the agency was partnering with selected banks to implement the Matching Fund Programme for MSMEs toward increasing access to finance.
This intervention, he said, was delivering credit as a promotional mechanism to enhance enterprise output, competitiveness and job creation..
According to him, prospective beneficiaries can have access to loans between N2. 5 million and N500 million.
Odii urged all suitaby qualified MSEs in the agribusiness sub-sector to apply via the SMEDAN website www.smedan.gov.ng.
The Rector, Kaduna Business School, Dr Dahiru Sani, while taking them through the portal, said the primary responsibility of the BDSPs would be to support MSMEs in terms of how they would be responding to the shocks of the recent policy issues.
Sani, also a member of the National Steering Committee for the Accreditation and Certification of the BDSPs in Nigeria, said, “Our expectations now are that they are going to give us what we call a buffer or mechanical shock absorber for the MSMEs.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
