With growing unemployment rates and government’s increasing inability to provide jobs, one song on everyone’s lips is entrepreneurship. Politicians, government officials, captains of industries and economists are all talking about entrepreneurship and the need for the country’s army of unemployed youths to create jobs for themselves rather than wait endlessly to be handed jobs. Indeed, there is presently a global realisation that entrepreneurship is the way to go.
According to the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in engendering economic growth around the world. It generates new jobs, new ideas, new business models and new ways of marketing goods and services. And because it does all these and many more, it has the capacity to reduce unemployment and propel economic and social development.
Because entrepreneurs are never tired of developing innovative ways to run and manage their businesses, mobile technology offers a veritable platform for them through several available mobile devices.
In fact, today’s entrepreneurs are described as mobile entrepreneurs because with the mobile devices in their hands, they are able to serve broader areas, reach new customers, and empower women entrepreneurs and the disadvantaged. They are also able to facilitate access to capital and market information while stimulating economic growth via mobile payments.
A 2012 study on how mobile technology was driving global entrepreneurship, carried out by the Center for Innovation Technology at the Brooking Institutions revealed how the emergence of mobile technology was helping small business owners particularly in countries like Nigeria, Egypt and Indonesia grow their businesses much more than ever before.
Citing a Time Mobility Poll conducted in collaboration with Qualcomm, the centre said 93 per cent of the 4,250 adults surveyed in eight countries, believed that wireless mobile technology was very important to entrepreneurship.
It said, “81 per cent of those interviewed reported mobile technology helped them search for the lowest available price for something they wanted to buy; 78 per cent felt it gave them access to a larger group of potential customers, and 78 per cent believed it helped them follow up with their customers.” The survey also indicated that “77 per cent thought it granted access to financial services information; 74 per cent believed it allowed them to find where they could sell goods for the best price, and 63 per cent believed it strengthened the economy in their home country.”
It also said, “In addition, the poll inquired as to how important wireless mobile technology would be for various business activities. 91 per cent believed it would enable access to financial services for businesses and entrepreneurs. Ninety-one per cent thought wireless encouraged home-based entrepreneurship by improving the ability to sell goods in regional and global marketplaces. 90 per cent believed it would help businesses use online tools such as inventory planning.
“Eighty-one per cent said it would enable farmers and fisherman in rural areas to coordinate with markets to search for the best possible price for their goods. Eighty-nine per cent thought wireless streamlined the way businesses handle transactions by allowing a merchant to accept payment and move funds.”
The statistics are quite revealing, and the interpretation is simple. Nigerian entrepreneurs should stop complaining about many obstacles the country’s challenging business environment places on their path. As a recent survey conducted by Visa Incorporated and Fundamo, the visa-owned mobile money platform revealed, there are 110 million mobile subscribers in Nigeria alone, and if current population figures put our number at 160 million, it simply means a good majority of us now have one mobile device or the other.
With the acquisition of mobile devices growing at substantial rates in Nigeria and across the globe, entrepreneurs have no excuse not to grow their businesses. Why? Because with these devices, doing business has become a lot easier. Regardless of what business you are into, your business model or literacy level, your mobile phone, smartphone and tablets can help you do so much business. For instance, you can reach your customers and prospects wherever they are, you can pay your creditors and receive money using mobile money transfers, and you can access capital and market information as well as monitor sales and work teams without leaving your office.
So, take a closer look at your smartphone or Ipad, it could do much more than taking and receiving calls, sending and receiving mails or just ‘facebooking’. We will explore more mobile opportunities in a future piece.