How sustainable finance ecosystem enables the growth of SMEs in Nigeria:Driving SMEs Growth

The concept of ecosystem and its contribution to solving societal problems is widely in discourse, especially in fields of ecology, management and innovation (De Jonge et al., 2012). It refers to a group of interacting entities that depend on each other’s activities. Its popularity came from Ecosystem services (ES) Framework/theory created to analyse social, ecological, and economic benefits that people obtain from nature (Blahna et al., 2017). Other ecosystems have emerged. IFC (2021) created a linear non-theory-based sustainable finance (SF) ecosystem framework. The current research leveraged ES framework/theory and Agency Theory as its theoretical underpinnings to investigate SF practice for growth of SMEs in Nigeria (the largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 2017), abundant natural resources and large SMEs base).<br/>This paper contributes to the field of entrepreneurship, strategic management, sustainable finance and accounting by developing a conceptual model of SF to enable sustainable businesses growth and socioeconomic development.<br/>