Business
SOLAP Enterprise Hub Produces First Winner, Awards N1.5m to Top Pitch Winner
A young entrepreneur, Magaji Emmanuel, founder of MJ Farms, has emerged winner of the maiden edition of the SOLAP Enterprise Hub, Youth Entrepreneurship Program 2025, clinching a N1.5 million business investment grant at the grand finale held Friday at Ordlin Event Center, Jos.
Emmanuel outperformed nine other finalists in a competitive live pitch session, following a six-week intensive training programme that began with hundreds of applicants drawn from Abuja, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau and Kaduna States.
The SOLAP Enterprise Hub, Youth Entrepreneurship Program 2025, an initiative of SOLAP Group, is designed to nurture young entrepreneurs into wealth creators, job providers and drivers of community development. From over 100 applications received, 50 entrepreneurs were shortlisted and trained, with only 10 advancing to the final pitch stage.
Presenting his business model, Emmanuel, a Quantity Surveying student of Kaduna State University, showcased his integrated poultry farm which not only produces poultry birds but also converts poultry waste into organic hybrid fertilizer. His innovation, aimed at addressing rising fertilizer costs, earned him the top prize.
Speaking after his victory, Emmanuel expressed gratitude to God and dedicated the achievement to his late father, whose initial vision inspired the business. He noted that the grant would help scale production and expand access to affordable fertilizer for farmers.
Earlier, the Group Managing Director of SOLAP Group, Arc. Akosu Paul, said the initiative forms part of the company’s corporate social responsibility to support young entrepreneurs with viable ideas through training, mentorship and grants.
He explained that the programme aims to raise 100 millionaires within the next 10 years, stressing the importance of investing in youth who possess the energy, vision and fewer distractions needed to grow sustainable businesses.
The event also featured a panel discussion on “Thriving in Uncertainty: Building Resilience and Entrepreneurship,” with experts including Chief Samuel Adetunji, Mrs Theresa Gofwen and Mrs Mary Oyewole, who shared insights on navigating business challenges.
In a show of support, Chief Adetunji donated an additional N100,000 each to the top three winners, as well as to the best female contestant and another participant who pitched a fish farming business.
Speaking at the event, Mr Val Okafor of the Val Okafor Company, implementing partner of the initiative, described the programme as a structured intervention aimed at bridging the gap between ideas and sustainable enterprises.
According to him, participants underwent practical training in business development, market research, branding and revenue strategies, equipping them with the skills needed to build viable businesses.
Other winners at the event included Ani Nnaemeka Kingsley of NovelArts, who emerged first runner-up with a N1 million grant for his innovative use of waste materials in interior décor and art production.
Mom Terkaa Titus of Jumo Farms secured the second runner-up position, winning N500,000 for his Agri-Rentals concept, a farm mechanization hub for smallholder farmers.
The top female contestant, Egba Agnes of AG’s Creations, also received an additional N500,000 grant to support her fashion design business and training academy for aspiring designers.
Organisers described the maiden edition as a success, noting that the initiative will continue to expand opportunities for young entrepreneurs across Nigeria.
The executive secretary of UN Climate Change, Simon Stiell, told the ministers at COP31 that climate finance must be redesigned to lift developing countries out of a cycle of debt and disaster, adding that meeting a headline figure will not do it.
“Meeting a financial target does not always meet countries’ needs. To do that, we need to look at how finance is delivered,” Mr Stiell said on Friday at the opening of a high-level ministerial dialogue on climate finance in Antalya, Turkey.
Countries agreed at COP29 that developed nations would lead in providing $300 billion a year by 2035, as part of a wider effort to raise $1.3 trillion annually from all sources.
Mr Stiell said the roadmap for reaching those sums “must become reality”, but that the terms of the money mattered as much as the amount.
“Many developing countries are trapped in a downward loop of debt, disaster, and devastating capital costs,” he said. “The threat of floods, fires, storms and droughts hangs over them, pushing up the price of borrowing even before disaster strikes.”
He stated that the terms of finance should reflect each country’s debt position.
“Private finance, loans and guarantees are essential to achieving our collective goals. But grant-based and highly concessional finance will remain critical, particularly for Least Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States and other very vulnerable economies,” he said.
According to him, broader action on debt is also needed to prevent countries from being forced to choose between repayments and resilience.
International climate finance for developing countries reached about $137 billion in 2024, and almost 70 per cent of it came in the form of loans, according to a UN Women flagship report released on Tuesday in Antalya.
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa paid more than twice as much in external debt service between 2021 and 2023 as they received in climate finance, according to an analysis published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
The analysis found that interest payments consumed more than 10 per cent of government revenue in 27 African countries in 2024.
The chair of the African Group of Negotiators, Nana Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, has said that a transition could not be called just if poorer countries have to “mortgage their futures” to pay for it.
The group lost a bid on Monday for a separate agenda item on tripling adaptation finance. It now wants the target prioritised in the summit’s cover decision.
Nigeria is not on the UN’s list of least developed countries, which places it among the states the UN climate chief expects to rely more on loans, guarantees and private capital.
It needs about $337 billion between 2026 and 2035 to implement its climate commitments, according to the National Council on Climate Change.
Omotenioye Majekodunmi, the agency’s director-general, said more than 80 per cent of that will have to come from private investment, commercial debt, and international carbon finance.
About $2.5 billion a year went to climate action in Nigeria in 2021 and 2022, counting domestic and international sources, according to the Climate Policy Initiative’s tracking.
The dialogue was the last in a series that began in 2013, and its conclusions will go to COP32 in Ethiopia next year, Mr Stiell said.
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