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New information age boon to SMEs
2006-03-22 06:58:41
By Mireny John
The latest International Labour Organisation (ILO) report on economic growth and job creation in Africa partly suggests that decent jobs potentially exist in the informal sector.
And, in the African context, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are typically informal sector undertakings, which are one of the mostrapidly growing economic sectors.
What is needed is for governments to put in place pro-active policies that are supportive to the exponential growth of SMEs.
Experience from developed and some emerging markets show that SMEs grow faster when they practice electronic or e-commerce in managing their enterprises.
Last week, at a forum on ICTs, trade and economic growth held in Addis Ababa, under the auspices of the UN-Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), convergent views from participants showcased why e-commerce is positioned to kick-start African SMEs’ growth potential.
E-commerce covers supply, marketing and distribution of goods, in addition to management of the client, business-to-business, business to customer, as well as administration of entire enterprise activities using information and communication technologies (ICTs).
The use of ICTs in doing business demands first of all that those technologies be made available and accessible through purposeful state policy engagement.
The direction is to ensure that computers and related software, cell-phones and fixed line and wireless phones are no more regarded as luxurious items.
At the operational level, the interconnection rates between different service providers should be regulated to ensure that SMEs and other potential users are not priced out .
Participants noted the instances of several African countries, including Tanzania, of having managed to abolish tariffs on computers, thus facilitating access.
However, as Ms. Djuine Mirabelle of Cameroon correctly pointed out, Africa’s primary concern is not ICTs’ assets, but how to use them to meet SMEs’ expectations.
The skills’ gap facing African SMEs needs to be addressed immediately, as how to use database, software for financial management, with the view to reducing marketing costs and penetrating foreign markets has now become essential.
One of the challenges facing African policy makers in the area of moulding an Africa information society, according to Ato Tesfaye Birru, CEO of the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, is to put in place infrastructure as a public good, and make money out of the value it adds, thereby reducing the cost of access.
Ms. Sheila Smail of Canada described the SMEs’ skills development in her country, noting that nationwide awareness raising campaigns and training, coupled with a good policy environment, successfully addressed barriers preventing SMEs from applying ICTs.
However, in order to establish an enabling environment for the development of e-commerce, each individual African country and African regional grouping need to re-design legal and regulatory elements of the telecommunications environment, security of networks, authentication and certification issues.
Though the Internet has emerged as a new medium for trade, and issues of security, like cyber hacking.
A country like Tunisia has established a National Digital Certification Agency to build confidence in e-commerce.
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