This year’s MTN Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) Month has been launched with a call on SMEs to deploy digital technology to grow their businesses.
The month-long programme is on the theme “Optimising Business Solutions for SME Growth”.
The Acting Chief Enterprise Business Officer of MTN Ghana, Daniel Asare, speaking at the launch in Accra on Monday,
said adopting digital technology would help them to increase their presence on both the local and global market, reduce costs, improve turnover and increase productivity and efficiency.
“The need for businesses to digitalise has always been an issue but with the kind of challenges we all face, SMEs stand a better chance of surviving when they adopt digitalisation and technological solutions,” Mr Asare stated.
He said digitalisation could support SME integration into both local and global markets, adding that with innovation and technology, SMEs could compile data and analyse their own operations to improve their performance.
Mr Asare noted that over the past two decades, MTN had strategically invested in the growth of the Ghanaian SME ecosystem.
“Our contributions to supporting the growth of businesses in Ghana cannot be overemphasised considering the number of businesses we work with within our space. If we use our supply chain as an example, we can confidently say that many of the suppliers within our supply chain started as SMEs and have significantly grown to the levels they found themselves at currently,” he stated.
Mr Asare said the programme would provide opportunity for MTN Ghana to get closer to the SME community, and offer them relevant digital tools and solutions to help grow and scale up and showcase their businesses.
According to him, the activities outlined for the month’s programme included SMEs activations, training sessions for selected SMEs, focus group discussions, training on Chenosis, presentations on MTN business solutions and market fairs.
The MTN Group Chief Enterprise Business Officer, Tumi Chamayou, said MTN had partnered with a number of financial institutions, including banks and insurance companies, under the MTN-SMEs Month programme to provide financial and insurance support to SMEs.
The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, in his remarks, noted that supporting the growth of SMEs was crucial to the growth of Ghanaian economy.
He said MTN Ghana would continue to initiate innovative, digital and technology-driven products and services to support the growth of SMEs in the country.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE
