JINO INSIGHTS

The African narrative as a hopeless continent is swiftly changing. There is a great mindset change towards Entrepreneurship among Africans today than a couple of decades ago.

we are witnessing more women and youth coming on board to create innovative solutions to the challenges facing the continent, and establishing businesses that are courting global recognition.

Their efforts are highly transforming the African economies through large contributions to GDP, and creation of employment opportunities, amidst all the uncertainties in the economic environment.

With such enthusiasm for Entrepreneurship and the need to change the status quo, the most relevant questions to ask become, what can we do to see that our efforts as young entrepreneurs in this field are never futile.

How can we build an ecosystem that supports the growth of our enterprises?

Jino Insights has carefully done a research and selected 4 proven areas that can be improved to ensure sustainability, and growth of any business regardless of its sector.

Investing in digital infrastructure. This refers incorporating digital technologies that support the different activities of the business. Examples include; digital marketing, and automation platforms, ecommerce, cloud computing, email and instant message applications, accounting applications and payrolls, employee management technologies.

The business world has never been the same after the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic with a shift to a digital system of business operations, we cannot underestimate the power of digital infrastructure. Businesses that were not flexible enough to adopt digitalization and technology have never recovered or are still struggling from the effects of the pandemic.

In the words of Klaus Schwab, “the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world”. Therefore, its high time we moved away from the traditional system, to the highly growing digital economy.

Investing in human resources. The most valuable assets of any entity are its people. The quality of employees determine the quality of products, quality of customer care, level of professionalism, and overall value put on the market. History has shown us that companies that put a priority on developing their employees have grown to reap the benefits of rapid growth and sustainability, which African Entrepreneurs should not take for granted if they are to build business empires.

Taking advantage of the AfCFTA. The Africa continental free trade area agreement presents number of opportunities for the African entrepreneurs in spheres of broader market through intra-African trade, collaborations, development of infrastructure, sharing technology.

Entrepreneurs should begin thinking of streamlining their activities with the opportunities that AfCFTA brings

Accessing quality data. In the knowledge economy we live in today, where productuction is principally driven by knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to technical and scientific innovation, data has become the new oil that fuels growth of economies and enterprises.

The dynamics of the business environment makes data a powerful tool to remain relevant in a volatile market. Data reveals the new trends in the market, such as keeping up with ecommerce technology especially after the pandemic,

Managing employee expectations, such as integration into remote and hybrid work. Digital marketing, etc are the new trends in the economy but entrepreneurs need relevant data to understand these trends to capitalize strategically for growth.

In summery, let’s shift our focus into investing in digital infrastructure, human resource, quality data, and taking advantage of the AfCFTA to build our businesses and transform our economies.