Rebecca Ejifoma
Co-founder of Lagos Startup Week, Mr. Olumide Olayinka, has appealed to small scale business owners (SMEs) to take advantage of technology in order to enhance their business operations and scale across countries.
Olayinka said this at the one week 2019 Lagos Start up Week held across Lagos state. The Prime Start-up, Lagos Innovator, Alliance Franciase, Lagos, and Africa’s Talking made this collaborative efforts.
Tagged, “Collaboration-Together We Can Achieve More”, it targeted entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, developers, corporate and local leaders, information and technology experts, and government officials who came in a large number.
“Although SMEs owners are the backbones of the economy, someone who has an e-commerce store can easily launch operation in Ghana,” he said.
Continuing, Olayinka stressed that technology enables and gives the opportunity to scale across multiple countries as against the bricks and mortar business that we have been used to in Africa.
As seen globally, Olayinka reminds Nigerians that the world is changing and technology is no longer an industry but an underlying driver of change and innovation for every business.
He, however, said that collaboration is the new competition in Africa and across the world. “It enables business owners build lasting and sustainable businesses”.
Accordingly, he added: “We are highly competitive in Africa. And to create sustainable business is by working together. Inclusiveness and interconnectedness of talents, communications, and exchanges will lead to facilitating new developments and ideas when we collaborate.”
The co-founder highlighted that corporate organisations now understand corporate service startup which aim at fostering collaboration with small businesses.
“Corporate organisations are looking for starts-up that can leverage on their infrastructure and customer-based to build long lasting solutions to business needs,” he expressed.
He further emphasised that for starts-up on the other hands, they are looking at access to market which the corporate organisation provides.
Since the Lagos Week Start-up is bent on fostering the growth of entrepreneurship across Africa, Olayinka echoed their unwavering commitment to achieving their pursuit.
