UBA mentors 5000 SMEs, buyers on physical, online biz

The United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA), through its UBA Market Place, brought together over 5000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Abuja to interact with customers physically and online.

The event, tagged ‘The UBA Market Place’, took place on Friday and Saturday with

hundreds of SMEs exhibiting their products and services to thousands of visitors.

The exhibition also saw mentorship sessions for young entrepreneurs and businesses by people who have raised successful businesses.

Mr. Kennedy Uzoka, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, UBA, told journalists on the sidelines of the event that the bank organised the event because it noticed a gap that was negatively impacting SMEs.

“We noticed a void which an enterprise like UBA should cover. The void we are covering is bringing the buyers and the sellers together. It is not significantly different from what Alibaba and eBay have done,” he said.

“We started the UBA Market Place online like the eBay but we decided to do it physically. Everyone you see here can still do same shopping online. The idea of bringing people together is to also help them interact and to leverage on our chairman’s vision of creating mentorship opportunities,” he said.

Mr. Uzoka also said: “UBA is in the forefront of MSMEs financing. We have created very strong SME desk in our bank. We are working from the standpoint of the customer which is our philosophy.

“So we are not designing our products the way a typical banker would do. Again, because of our integration with SMEs, we understand them better and we are designing our products for them,”Uzoka stated.