Author(s): Fatai Alani Lawal, Oluwole O Iyiola, Omotayo A Adegbuyi
The significance of Entrepreneurship development can be appreciated from the perspective of the promotion of growth, innovation and prosperity of economies. An effective financial system is one that can provide incentives in form of financial resources to a broad range of enterprises in diverse circumstances and channel financial wealth from different sources to business investments. However, availability, accessibility and sufficiency of appropriate financial capital to achieve growth and expansion of entrepreneurial endeavour has been the major constraint on entrepreneurs in contributing adequately to economic growth as well as achieving entrepreneurship development more importantly in developing economies. This review examined targeted government assistance towards entrepreneurial financing as well as the extent to which entrepreneurs are utilising alternative financing avenues to meet their financing needs in Nigeria. The study revealed that the adoption of alternative channels of funding is gradually gaining ground in Nigeria aside the use of traditional lending instruments. This is in addition to government support that focuses on establishing diverse schemes and various specialized financial institutions to deliver appropriate funding to the SMEs subsector. It is imperative to have a purposeful and focused government policy initiatives aimed at instituting cost effective financing framework and awareness targeted towards ameliorating the financing needs of entrepreneurs.