GroFin and Shell Foundation to support MENA SMEs

Dubai: Shell Foundation and GroFin, the specialist SME development financier, on Monday announced a new initiative, Nomou, to provide critical business support and patient capital to SMEs across the MENA region.

Nomou aims to catalyse the SME sector in the MENA region as a major driver of sustainable job creation, by providing extensive business support and a targeted that exceeds $100 million (Dh367 million) in growth finance to start-up and growing SMEs. The objective is to create over 15,000 sustainable jobs, improve 195,000 livelihoods, and delivering business support to more than 600 sustainable SMEs across Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

With MENA currently experiencing the highest regional unemployment in the world (more than 10 per cent), the World Bank estimates that Arab countries need to create 100 million new jobs by 2020 to ensure sustainable social development and economic growth. The SME sector can be a major engine of sustainable job creation but as recent research from Hearts & Mind Strategies shows, the market in MENA is critically under-served with entrepreneurs lacking the vital resources that they need to succeed: access to flexible patient capital, access to business skills and training, and linkages to supply chains.

Nomou seeks to address these market barriers by providing risk capital through loans ranging from $100,000 to $2 million, based on the viability of an SME’s business plan as opposed to the availability of collateral, and extensive pre- and post-investment business support to help entrepreneurs develop and execute effective growth strategies.

The initiative has already attracted the interest of a range of investors, donors and development agencies, with active partners now including Royal Dutch Shell, Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation, UK’s Department for International Development, JP Morgan Chase Foundation and UKAid. The support provided by the JP Morgan Chase Foundation will be directed towards business skills and training for entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. Royal Dutch Shell will provide additional support by identifying potential suppliers and contractors within its supply chains who can benefit from support offered by Nomou.

Nomou is based on GroFin and Shell Foundation’s 10-year track record of providing vital and much-needed support to SMEs in Africa, where they have already created more than 14,000 jobs, provided almost 6,100 SMEs with business support, and generated $1.67 billion of economic impact. The partners are now bringing this proven integrated solution to the under-served SME sector in the MENA region.