Charles Odii, the Director General of the Small Medium Enterprises Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), urged small businesses to capitalize on social media platforms for their growth. Odii shared this advice on Friday during the reception of a delegation from the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) for the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two Federal Government agencies.
He emphasized that Nigeria, with its vast number of over 40 million small businesses, has the potential to address unemployment challenges by enabling these SMEs to expand and become significant employers of labour.
“Imagine each of the 40 million small businesses are equipped with digital skills so much so that one small business can employ 5 people. You can just imagine the opportunities,” he said.
“Right now any small business person that is not taking advantage of the digital platforms should be caning himself.
“Small businesses must leverage social media platforms for business expansion and business sales and start making revenues just leveraging digital platforms.
“We want to help to formalise our small businesses. This means that we know who they are and what their pinpoints are. And almost immediately we can now start tailoring solutions to solve their problems.
“Right now there’s geometric power in Aba, almost immediately we can go to Aba and because we have those kinds of government interventions in Aba, we can start to profile all the small businesses that need digital services.
“If we can meet that, we’re helping people in Aba to increase their production and reduce the cost of operation. These are the kinds of things we need to be doing, leveraging technology.”
