By Marcel Mbamalu and Bankole Orimisan
THE Federal Government has said it would deliver on its promise of encouraging the development of a robust Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, to bolster interpreneurship in the country.
Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, who re-echoed this pledge in Lagos on Monday, at the opening session of the ongoing five-day Google small business web fair, said Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) need the Internet to increase profitability and add to economic growth.
The web fair, a programme within the Google’s Get Nigerian Businesses Online (GNBO) initiative, seeks to help, at least, 5,000 SMEs register online.
Stakeholders at the fair variously reasoned that there is also increasing empirical evidence that suggests that simply putting a website on the Internet “increases the revenue and productivity of SMEs many fold with commensurate contributions to job and wealth creation and of course contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“This is why the Google Getting Nigeria Businesses Online initiative is so important and why the Ministry of Communication Technology is supporting this initiative,” the Minister said.
Google Nigeria Country Manager, Juliet Ehimuan, explained the small business web fair “is an opportunity for thousands of small businesses to create a free website and learn the basics of building an online business.
“We have seen that going online can have a tremendously positive impact on the growth and profitability of small businesses in Nigeria,” she observed.
Ehimuan explained that the GNBO, which was launched in September, aims at helping to build the online ecosystem and to grow the economy. This, she said, is facilitated through the provision of free business website backed with a host of free training. Already, more than 4000 businesses have gotten online through the project. “We are putting a lot of investment in this”, she said.
According to Ehimuan, Google has a strong partnership structure with MTN, Ecobank, Ministry of Communication Technology and Lagos State and other vendors that is very representative of the ecosystem.
Johnson however, noted that SMEs, in developing countries, have been very slow in adopting ICT, a situation she described as unfortunate given their potential role as development agents.
SME’s, the Minister said, have been widely acknowledged as being the most viable vehicle for sustaining industrial development because they possess the capacity to promote an indigenous enterprise culture.
According to her, in most developing economies, SMEs are being used as a strategy for employment generation, food security, poverty alleviation, rapid industrialisation and reversing rural urban migration as well as a tool for economic restructuring for development and growth.
Reeling out statistics, the Minister said SMEs provide 50 per cent of global employment and that 90 per cent of registered businesses are SMEs. “In Malaysia, in 2006, SMEs, which were 99.2 per cent of all businesses, contributed 47.3 per cent of GDP and 65.3 per cent of employment.”
She said, in Nigeria, the statistics are similar but with some important differences. 70 per cent of our employment is provided by SMEs but SMEs deliver only 10 per cent of economic value added (a proxy for GDP contribution), compared to an average of 55 per cent and 25 per cent in other developing economies and 60 per cent and 50 per cent respectively in developed economies. These statistics show that Nigerian SMEs are not as productive as they can, should or need to be.” She attributed poor performance of small businesses to poor infrastructure, poor skill base, as well as low rate of adoption of ICT and the resultant lack of access to wider market.
Johnson explained that access to the Internet would let “those who don’t naturally see your business see it online,” even as she stressed that the role of the Ministry is to facilitate access to the Internet.
“A website on the Internet increases the chances of creating more revenue, which, in turn, increases the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP),” she explained, assuring of the Ministry’s readiness to go all the way with Google in its GNBO initiative, in line with the Ministry’s focus of getting businesses online.
She said the ICT has been globally credited with “changing the course of history and adding value to human lives” in many ways.
“In practically every sphere of life today, ICT is redefining how people live, how they work and how the go about the ways of life,” she noted.
The minister said, that the GNBO initiative, through the Internet, would enable local companies select and partner with companies in the international business community, going beyond the borders of their natural territories to interact, collaborate and do business with their counterparts across the globe.
Johnson said e-commerce, which is, in itself, enabled by ICT and the Internet, has enabled the provision of high value-added services at relatively low cost.
“The list of the transforming effect of ICT and the Internet in business is seemingly endless. Unfortunately, all over the developing world, SMEs have been slower to adopt ICT and embrace the advantages that ICT offers than large corporations. I say unfortunate because of the role that SMEs play in the economic and social development of a nation.”
“The Ministry is extremely pleased to note that the Nigeria Internet Registration Association NIRA is promoting a Switch to .nag campaign, ensuring that Nigerian businesses are hosted on local infrastructure with adequate security and support. Google has already registered its presence on the .ng domain name and is by this initiative populating the .ng domain for the benefit of Nigeria.
“Given the statistics that I have mentioned above and Google’s offer to get more Nigerian businesses online, I would strongly encourage SMEs to wholeheartedly embrace the internet and take that small first step of having a website on the .ng domain. Today Nigeria has an estimated 33 million Internet users and we have targets to double this number in the next three to four years. Getting your business online immediately gives you access to this market, not to talk of the hundreds of millions of other Internet users out there – a very strong value proposition in our opinion.”
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