The Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce (NACC), has urged Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria, to embrace technology and harness its potential to the fullest in order to grow their business maximally and survive these challenging times.

Speaking at the chamber’s spotlight event, a dedicated platform that provides SMEs the opportunity to gain transformational knowledge from leading best practice/role model institutions, it featured presentations from experienced players in the technology and SME ecosystem.

Themed: ‘Technology as an enabler for SME Growth, Sustainability and Success’ the chamber’s president, Dame Adebola Williams, pointed out that Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt are currently the central focus of Africa’s tech ecosystem. Referred to as the “big four” markets, she said the four countries have received about 73 per cent of total tech financing in Africa.

“Nigeria has a fast-growing tech sector mainly driven by financial services and telecommunication, home to over 400 tech start-ups and ranked 61st out of 100 countries worldwide in the start-up ecosystem index. Not only have various technology platforms played critical roles in helping small business owners in the U.S. and Nigeria survive recent economic turbulence, those small businesses that fully embrace technology are out-competing their peers’, she said.

She added that it is important to keep updating business owners on new strategies they can use especially now that businesses are struggling. “We are looking for ways and means to help our members run their businesses better and faster. We all know the situation in the country is going from bad to worse and the only thing we can do is create new ways to do business in order to survive these hard times.”

According to her, over 60 million Nigerians and counting, live in multi-dimensional poverty, a number that should scare any government. Adding that more Nigerians are more tech-savvy than they appear, she said there are so many simple tech hacks and innovation that small businesses can employ to boost sales including advertising on WhatsApp and simple B2B business solutions among others. “Nigerian business owners are not lazy and I would only advise that they continually seek out advice on what to do in order to improve.”

The Director of communications, Government Relations and Advocacy and acting Director-General of the chamber, Wofai Samuel, revealed that technology is shaping the world and redefining how things are done in all sectors. “We work with mostly SMEs and thought on how to help them advance what they do, using technology. We brought together people from different sectors who we strongly believe can provide deeper insights and guide SMEs on ways they can use technology to advance business operations. As acting DG, capacity building, fostering partnerships, creating platforms for networking and advocacy are my mandates. The tech platforms as well as their leaders were all assembled to share experiential knowledge with small businesses on how to better adopt technology for their businesses,” she said.

Senior sales manager, Rack Centre, Abiodun Sanni, spoke on how SMEs can embrace and take advantage of digital infrastructure for their businesses. He said asides being the backbone for economic development, SMEs contribute significantly to employment and often drive new industry verticals. Regretting that despite all they bring to the table, they face a lot of problems, which threatens their survival. He added that embracing digital infrastructure can however, increase efficiency and improve productivity, help businesses compete globally while operating locally; increase customer base; become more competitive; increase attraction to investors and operate sustainably.

He went on to add that some factors that could mitigate against tech adoption include high initial cost, inconsistent regulations, knowledge gaps, concerns about data privacy, insufficient investment among others.

Country Manager, LM Ericsson Nigeria Limited, Peter Olusoji Ogundele, said technology is very important now more than ever, as it helps businesses achieve more and accurately, in less time, saving significant costs.

Speaking on technology as an enabler for small businesses, head SME Digital Products, Sterling Bank, Bolanle Tyson, revealed that SMEs have several pain points but technology has the ability to solve most of these problems through automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, cloud computing and analytics.