Epilogue

Summary

In 2010, as Nigeria marks 50 years of independence, hopes that informal enterprise networks can contribute to broad-based economic development are fading. Particularly in the south-east of the country, there is a growing sense that the situation has reached a tipping point. In place of the expanding dynamic of employment and pro-poor growth that had begun to incorporate disaffected youth in surrounding south-eastern states during the 1980s and early 1990s, Aba's enterprise clusters are increasingly drawn into patterns of violence and disorder spilling over from the Niger Delta. Initiatives from the state and international community pay lip service to the promotion of informal entrepreneurship, but misplaced economic ideologies and political struggles over oil resources continue to undermine even the most basic support for small enterprise development. Communitized security strategies funded by oil companies, underhanded patronage by local politicians, and demobilization and amnesty strategies have pumped billions of dollars into militias and vigilantes in the Delta and south-eastern states, while informal entrepreneurs are left to fend for themselves.

Recently, an encouraging surge of development attention has been focused on the Aba enterprise clusters by the Abia State government, and by the Small and Medium-Scale Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), established in 2004. Within the framework of a wider national policy for micro, small and medium-scale enterprise (MSME) development in Nigeria, SMEDAN is promoting ‘made in Aba’ goods as part of Nigeria’s rebranding exercise.