Heritage Bank Partners D’banj On New ‘Koko Agropreneur’ Initiative

Dbanj, Nigeria's hottest world-acclaimed musical icon, has made a name for himself in the entertainment world. He is, today, one of Africa's cult-figure artistes, with a followership that cuts across socio-economic barriers. On Monday, 9 June 2014, D'Banj, a.k.a the KOKO Master, launched yet another significant aspect of his career path; a strong entrepreneurial initiative focusing on Agriculture and Agro-economic enterprise.

KOKO AGROPRENEUR is Dbanj's latest initiative and it is aimed, on the one hand, at providing practical leadership and encouragement to the massive youth population to embrace the agricultural revolution being championed by the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adeshina, as part of the national socio-economic transformation agenda. It is also an initiative designed to stress the significance of small and medium enterprises as a veritable platform for future economic well-being of the country.

Earlier in the year, Dbanj made a donation of N50 million to Nagropreneur (Nigeria Agricultural Entrepreneur) - the national agricultural renewal project being championed by the Ministry of Agriculture - after he was appointed as the brand ambassador for the Nagropreneur initiative.

Providing support for the Koko Master in this new venture is Heritage Bank, the nation's most innovative bank whose mandate is the creation, preservation and transfer of wealth via robust SME Support Scheme.

Through its unique SME Clinic, Heritage Bank continues to offer a holistic bailout strategy for SMEs in the country through an amalgam of services such as business diagnostics, advisory services, financial literacy and entrepreneurship development, customized product development for each customer and market knowledge development. This scheme is backed up by the innovative Heritage Bank Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Investment Protection Fund; a non-collateralized funding option with embedded insurance for the default risk inherent in the SME scheme to assist the growth and rejuvenation of the sector.

The Heritage Bank support for KOKO AGROPRENEUR spans the entire scope of idea fine-tuning, advisory, set-up, financials and customized product development in order to enhance the initiative's MSME capacities and strengthen its business management skills, in addition to offering support programmes aimed at developing its survival and growth capabilities.

According to Bayo Ogunnusi, Group Head, SME Banking at Heritage Bank, 'We at Heritage Bank are pleased to partner with Dbanj in the 'Nagropreneur' (Nigeria Agricultural Entrepreneur) initiative. As a bank whose ideology is to create, preserve and transfer wealth across generations, this initiative falls right within our purview'.