TBWA Concept, a marketing communication firm and Ford Foundation, an international, NGO, are providing capacity building for 10,000 Nigerian SMEs. The initiative skewed towards women-run businesses is part of measures aimed at reducing the negative economic impact of the Covid 19 Pandemic and the resulting economic recession. This is with the understanding that the struggling SMEs which constitute about 95 % of Nigeria’s businesses are the engine of economic growth. In this interview, Kelechi Nwosu, MD of TBWA/Concept told Daniel Obi that professionals across various industries were engaged to tackle different challenges confronting SMEs. The trainings in modules produced as videos are to be downloaded free. Nwosu speaks more on the initiative. Excerpts.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the recent EndSARS protest have laid prostrate businesses. When you assess the impact on SMEs, what picture do you see?
Everybody knows that it has been a tough year for businesses and economies. Typically, it will be tougher on SMEs because they have lower reserves and lower resilience to shocks. Many of them need to have continuous revenue flows on regular basis. Even before Covid-19, there were structural challenges for many businesses including issues of infrastructure, rising cost of production and challenges of accessing foreign exchange for those who needed it for their operations. There were typical challenges for SMEs which were exacerbated by Covid-19. We at TBWA /Concept in partnership with Ford Foundation, are therefore organizing a programme which is an answer to some of the SME challenges. During the Covid-19 period, we realized that some SMEs were thinking of how to pivot and change their business model. Many of them were geared for an economy that was based on e-commerce. For instance, there are many farms that were producing and selling to wholesalers as they were not geared towards supplying to consumers. With e-commerce and the knowledge, many of them can market and sell directly to consumers. We are therefore working with Ford Foundation as co-initiators on this project to build capacity for the SMEs and to reduce the impact of Covid-19 on their businesses. This initiative will also allow them to transform their businesses.
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SMEs have a lot of challenges, what aspect of their challenges are you therefore addressing in the capacity building programme?
Yes, they have marketing, management, financial, branding, access to market and many other challenges. We recognize these challenges and we are attacking them in the training. What we are doing under the TBWA SMEshop, our SME unit is that we gathered a couple of experts in different areas to speak to these gaps and these were made in videos. Some of the training modules are done on leadership, finance, branding, marketing and digitalisation. It is a collection of capacity enhancing videos for this intervention. The whole objective is to expose about 10,000 SMEs in Nigeria to these training videos which are free and will be live. The training is audio virtual and they are all free. It will come live from November 11, 2020 at www. Smeshop.ng
How do you plan to achieve this?
We sent out communication for the SMEs in all the six geo-political zones to register to be part of the training. It must be noted that Ford Foundation is about equity and equality especially concerning women. This project is tilted towards women because we feel a lot of women running MSMEs are more likely to be adversely affected by the business downturn. The training is focused on micro, small and medium enterprises. We want the 10,000 businesses to get the training modules recorded in videos. Presently, about 1,000 businesses have registered. Out of the targeted figure, we will be selecting about 50 businesses all over the country who will not only get the training in videos but who will participate in free live consultation with experts. Our facilitators who are part of these trainings will engage the 50 business owners in live consultations to support them.
What will inform the select 50 enterprises?
It is based on the response to questionnaires that we will send out. Their size, ambitions and attitude would also be weighted factors. Our plan is to allocate the free live consultation to 40 women and 10 to men. Strategically, we know that SMEs are engine of economic growth and they constitute about 95 percent of Nigerian businesses. Many businesses in Nigeria are SMEs by the definition of SME business. At TBWA/CONCEPT, we decided to be part of the SME movement with the understanding that for Nigeria to make progress in terms of GDP, quality of life and development, clearly, SMEs will need to grow and growth is our major mantra at TBWA/CONCEPT. The decisions we took was that if we are able to support as many SMEs as we can and assist in growing them, we will also grow ourselves. Under the TBWA SMEshop, we have successfully organized capacity building and live consultations for SMEs in Lagos, Nnewi and Aba. We have quality experience working with SMEs and we will continue to work to understand and support these SMEs under the TBWA SME Shop.
Are you doing this on the understanding that SMEs are engine of Nigeria’s economic growth?
Absolutely. We have seen that even from the many interventions the Federal government is doing to support SMEs. Ultimately, if we grow SMEs, the economy will grow.
How vibrant is Nigeria’s SME sector?
The vibrancy of Nigeria’s SME is not even across all the sectors. Some sectors have grown a little bit but others need a better structure and a deliberate plan to grow. Many areas have potential to grow such as ICT, food and entertainment, fashion and small scale manufacturing. They can grow quickly if there is a clear deliberate policy by government to enhance their growth through deliberate improvement of innovation and education. Government can give money to SMEs but it is more important to show or inspire them on how to earn the money.
In the midst of scarce resources, SMEs now need funds to acquire technology to drive their business.
How do you think they will cope?
Knowledge is important and this is not about static knowledge. It is about increasing the knowledge to understand what is happening and being adaptable. People who will likely make it in the 21st century are people who have learnt how to be adaptable. A lot of knowledge is free; but it is about understanding what is relevant to you and applies it. The whole thinking that lack of fund is the major challenge to SME may be wrong. I think it is knowledge (including innovation and creativity) or a lack of it is the challenge.
Why is the training for the SMEs free when you are spending money organizing it?
It is funded by Ford Foundation for now but we are putting in our intellectual capital and other resources into it. The long term gain is to get SMEs working. If we are able to get the select 50 brands working, then we have made impact. This is a long term gain for all of us. The project outcome for us is that it will allow the enterprises to mitigate the negative effects of Covid-19 on them, then they will change their behavior to increase turnover and become more productive because they have learnt how to run businesses. This will create job opportunities and perhaps opportunities for the agency as well.
To you, how does Nigeria move forward quickly?
We need a better and much more practical policy. Funding is good but we need deliberate policy which will hinge on intellectual property and innovations. If Nigeria wants to catch up with SME development, we need innovations. We don’t have enough products made here and if we really want to grow brands out of Nigeria, we need to be urgent and deliberate in pursuing capacity building that sparks innovation and management. We need to grow capacity for people to grow businesses. Remember that we are joining Africa free trade agreement which requires us to be more competitive with our products.
