A business woman and her customer posing for a photo in her stall at Santa Fair Afrique, an annual trade fair that brings together women entrepreneurs to showcase a range of products and services to customers and visitors, in Enugu, Nigeria on April 21, 2025. Photo courtesy: Santa Fair Afrique
For many women entrepreneurs in Nigeria, growing a business requires more than a good product. It requires access to markets, training, and networks. Chinemerem Agbai Ugwa is working to provide all three.
By Vera Chidimma, bird story agency
“Santa Fair blew my business up,” said Ifunanya Nwankwo during a busy morning at the fair in Enugu, Southeastern Nigeria. “It made me see markets outside the marketplace.”
Nwankwo was one of a number of vendors serving a steady stream of buyers at Polo Park Mall. As customers moved from one stand to another, comparing products, asking questions, and making purchases, the fair’s founder, Chinemerem Agbai Ugwa, walked through the aisles greeting exhibitors, many of whom she had spent months mentoring.
The market fair that Agabi Ugwa founded has, for many woman entrepreneurs, become far more than a marketplace. For many, it offers the first opportunity to reach customers beyond their immediate communities.
Across Nigeria, women own a significant share of micro, small and medium enterprises. Yet many continue to operate informally, which limits their access to finance, training and larger markets.
According to the International Finance Corporation’s 2025 MSMEs Factsheet, micro, small and medium enterprises make up more than 90% of businesses worldwide and account for an average of 70% of employment and 50% of global GDP. Yet the sector faces a financing gap of US$5.7 trillion, rising to US$8 trillion when informal enterprises are included.
Agbai Ugwa founded Santa Fair in 2018 to help address some of those barriers. Since its launch in Enugu, the initiative has grown from a seasonal trade fair into a business development platform that combines market access with entrepreneurship training, supporting thousands of women entrepreneurs across southeastern Nigeria.
Agbai Ugwa studied education and learned fashion design while at university. She also supplemented her income by selling zobo drinks on Sundays. Although those experiences introduced her to entrepreneurship, it was an entrepreneurship empowerment programme that shaped the idea behind Santa Fair.
“Fate Foundation organized a free training, but you had to, you know, qualify for it. We had a series, and it happened here in Enugu, covering the whole of Southeast, and we were just 40 of us entrepreneurs who were chosen and given the scholarship to take the class, which lasted for about two months.
During the programme, she met women who were already running businesses but often lacked the structures needed to grow them. Many relied on WhatsApp and referrals from family and friends to reach customers. Few had registered their businesses, opened dedicated business accounts or separated personal and business finances.
“Nobody was encouraging the women to actually step into the full shoes of being entrepreneurs,” Agbai Ugwa said. “Taking a business name, running it like an empire and thinking about legacy.”
She left the programme convinced that many women did not need new business ideas. They needed practical support to build stronger businesses and opportunities to reach new customers.
Later that year, she organised the first Santa Fair in Enugu.
“So the vision of Santa Fair, in its entirety, is helping women-owned Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to gain visibility and compete in the global market, so what we’re after is looking for all the available means for them to gain the visibility and compete in the global market.”
Convincing women to participate proved difficult. She initially set the vendor fee at ₦2,500 (about US$1.60), but after interest remained low, she reduced it to ₦1,500 (about US$1.00). Even then, only 23 vendors registered for the first fair.
Despite the modest turnout, many exhibitors recorded higher sales than they expected and reached customers beyond their existing networks. As participants shared their experiences through personal referrals and local media, interest in subsequent editions grew.
As the fairs expanded, Agbai Ugwa introduced entrepreneurship training alongside the exhibitions. Participants learned how to register businesses, open dedicated business accounts, improve record keeping, hire staff, develop marketing strategies and use digital platforms to reach more customers.
“We literally moved them from novices to actually thinking of legacy,” she said.
The programme also connected women with other entrepreneurs and professionals while encouraging them to build businesses that could grow beyond self-employment.
Olachi Chuks Ronnie, Southern Regional Coordinator at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, said women play a significant role in Nigeria’s small business sector but often receive less institutional support because many businesses operate informally.
“A lot of women do not have confidence in what they do,” she said. “Whatever it is they come up with, they think it is just an idea.”
She encouraged initiatives that push women to formalise their businesses improve their visibility to financial institutions, investors, and development programs. Registering a business, opening a business account and maintaining proper records can also improve access to loans, grants and larger commercial opportunities.
Today, Santa Fair has grown into a community of more than 3,000 women entrepreneurs. Each edition attracts about 500 vendors, and the initiative has expanded beyond Enugu into Ebonyi, Imo and Abia states.
Vendor fees have increased from ₦2,500 during the first fair to about ₦250,000 (approximately US$160), reflecting the demand for exhibition space and the commercial value many participants associate with the platform.
For Ifunanya Nwankwo, the programme changed the direction of her business.
For three years, she sold her beverages at Ogbete Market in Enugu, one of southeastern Nigeria’s busiest commercial centres. She earned about ₦20,000 (approximately US$13) a day and believed there was little reason to sell elsewhere.
When she first saw advertisements for Santa Fair, she ignored them.
It was only after discovering that the organizer was Agbai Ugwa, whom she knew from secondary school, that she decided to register.
“What I made in those three days was far bigger than what I had made in six months,” Nwankwo said.
She later enrolled in Santa Fair’s entrepreneurship training, moved from her market stall into a larger office and production space, hired staff and expanded her customer base through social media. Her products now reach customers in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and other African countries. She has also expanded into selling and organising gele tours across countries, including Cameroon.
For Agbai Ugwa, stories like Nwankwo’s show that market access alone is not enough. Women also need business knowledge, networks and the confidence to formalise and expand their enterprises.
Building Santa Fair was not without challenges. Financing was one of Agbai Ugwa’s biggest hurdles. Because she worked primarily with small businesses, she deliberately kept participation fees affordable, leaving her to absorb much of the cost of organising each fair.
She used personal savings to pay for venue hire, branding and event logistics, but often struggled to cover all the expenses. At times, she owed carpenters who built exhibition stalls, printers who produced promotional materials and suppliers who provided tents and chairs.
The financial strain was most severe during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when she spent months clearing debts carried over from the previous year’s fair before eventually settling them after hosting another edition in December 2021.
While building Santa Fair, Agbai Ugwa continued to grow her own career. She runs a fashion business, co-founded a school, and earned both a doctorate and a Master of Business Administration while pursuing additional professional certifications.
She said her own journey reinforced the message she shares with women entrepreneurs: that sustainable businesses require systems that can grow beyond their founders.
The women who joined Santa Fair were already running businesses before they attended the fair. What many lacked was access to wider markets, business training, and professional networks.
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