Earlier this month Mastercard released an insightful white paper titled ‘The Digital SME: How Are Small and Medium Enterprises in the Middle East and Africa Embracing a Digital Future?’.
As you can guess from the title, the paper explored the findings from studies they had conducted into the SME landscape in the African continent, a landscape that is rapidly seeking and needing to evolve into the digital realm.
The paper shows how the empowered SME sector is a growth engine for the economic development of countries across the Middle East and Africa, but it is not without its challenges, “…the chief being access to funding and digitalization which have emerged as huge needs. “
This is where partnerships play a key role – partners are needed to help healthy, connected small businesses leverage their digital potential – this is a viewpoint that is keenly shared and acted upon by both Mastercard and Bambwa Group.
“Connecting businesses to one another within the ecosystem, to help them grow and prosper, is a key objective” – and a surefire way to create #ImpactByAction.
You can download the original white paper here.
While Ventures Africa provides an excellent meta analysis of the piece here.