Toriola, Wigwe, Olusanya to Join Uzoma Dozie on Sparkle Webinar for SMEs

In a show of support for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria, Olutokun Toriola, CEO, MTN Nigeria, will join industry leaders to discuss ways of creating a supportive environment for SMEs at a webinar organised by Microfinance Bank, Sparkle Nigeria.

Olatokun Toriola, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), MTN Nigeria

In collaboration with the Entrepreneurship Development Centre, Pan Atlantic University, the webinar will be held on February 7, 2022.

According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria have contributed about 48% of the national GDP in the last five years. With a total number of about 17.4 million, they account for about 50% of industrial jobs and nearly 90% of the manufacturing sector, in terms of the number of enterprises.

Considering the contribution of SMEs to Nigeria’s GDP, it has become pertinent to discover and implement new ways to mitigate some of the challenges that SMEs in Nigeria face.

The organisers have stated that the webinar, themed, “SMEs as engineers of growth; Simplifying Support for Small Businesses” will see leading industry experts proffer solutions on how to tackle common challenges facing SMEs in Nigeria.

Panellists at the webinar include CEO, Flour Mills of Nigeria Group, Boye Olusanya, CEO, Access Bank Plc, Herbert Wigwe, Deputy Director, Enterprise Development Centre, Pan-Atlantic University, Nneka Okekearu; Senior Vice President, CEMEA at Visa, Otto Abasi Williams and Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Sparkle, Uzoma Dozie. The webinar will be moderated by Editor, BusinessDay Nigeria, Lehle Balde.

MTN Nigeria is committed to enabling the growth of small businesses through the offering of solutions to improve organizational effectiveness and productivity.

In 2020, MTN launched the Revv Programme as a give-back initiative, aimed at addressing the critical needs of SMEs during the COVID-19 period and in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The initiative was aimed at helping SMEs relearn, rethink and retool their businesses for growth in the emerging digital economy.

In 2021, MTN Nigeria launched a unified customer engagement platform, EnGauge, designed to enable small-to-medium enterprise business owners administer transactions with customers, potentially increasing their productivity significantly.