Mr Ken Sharpe, CEO, WestProp, Zimbabwe

By Rukayat Moisemhe

Speedy implementation of free movement of persons, goods and services is critical in benefiting from opportunities in the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), says Mr Ken Sharpe, a Zimbabwean business mogul.

Sharpe, also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), West Property, Zimbabwe, made the assertion during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday.

NAN reports that AfCFTA goal is to encourage trade, commerce and address the continent’s developmental challenges.

Sharpe said that the call was pertinent to reflect the true power of the continent and for accelerated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.

He, however, noted that five years into ratification of the AfCFTA, Africans were yet to benefit from the agreement due to several reasons.

“The are several reasons but the most important and pressing one is freedom of movement.

“You see Dubai was built because the visionary Sheik saw that creating the world’s largest airport and airlines would bring capital and investment to his country proves the point.

“We can’t fly directly between most African countries and visas are still required between many of our countries, thus restricting people moving affordably and easily.

“If people can’t have freedom of movement, then never mind moving goods because with all the trade tariffs and barriers that block trade, it is no wonder we are standing still.

“The message is for our leaders to wake up and make it happen like yesterday, for our future depends on it,” he said.

Sharpe also advocated the need for players in the real estate space to leverage technology to provide services that allow real time information relating to properties to address housing deficits in Africa.

According to him, Africans lived in a century where carbon oils is absolute, while the new fuel is data.

To this end, the real estate mogul said data and services could be tailor-made to provide services such as tracking and reducing electricity consumption, home automation and other offerings.

“Also, a possible solution to the housing deficit could be to create a shared stay app, like a shared ride where rooms unoccupied in homes could be rented out.

“Office vacancies can be converted to residential. However, data is needed to match the supply and demand needs, especially for low income earners,” he said.

He added that green and innovative solutions in the housing segment were critical to preserve the planet and have a sustainable climate.

“For example, at WestProp, we are already working with alternative energy solutions by using solar, gas and grey water.

“Smart homes allow electronically controlled valves and switches that allow you to turn your electricity and even water off to your geyser, control light switches and access and alarm control all from the touch of a button on your cell phone,” he said.

He urged upcoming entrepreneurs to focus on their core business, product or service and not spread too thin or be distracted to engender sustainability and success on the long run.(NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Olawunmi Ashafa

By Lydia Ngwakwe

Experts in digital marketing have urged Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) to take advantage of the various social media platforms to promote and sustain the viability of their businesses.

The experts gave the advice at Firstbank SME Connect webinar with theme, “Leveraging Social Media for Business Success: Best Practices and Strategies for Building Your Brand and Growing Your Audience’’, on Thursday in Lagos.

The founder Digital Marketing Skill Institute, Mr Tobi Asehinde, urged business owners to grow their audience by letting people to know about their brand on social media.

He said that for customers to be more aware of their services on social media, there’s need for  business owners to be a strong and credible brand on social media that people could trust.

He named four types of credibility that business owners could leverage their brand to include presumed credibility, reputed credibility (third party reference), surface credibility (use quality pictures to engage people) and earned credibility.

He urged them to also begin collaborate with other social media platforms like Instagram life, to show their faces or products on their brands.

He said that by the time people see their brand on those platforms, they would not be seeing them as a new business.

According to him, this automatically boost their businesses and trust that people have in them.

Mrs Chinwe Bode-Akinwande, Head, Digital Marketing at Firstbank, urged business owners to nurture the link in the middle of their sales funnel by creating quality content that would attract customers to their brand.

“No matter how small your business is, you need these tips to create a content strategy- define your target audience and identify them, their interest and the type of content they consume.

“ Define your content marketing objective, determine what you want to achieve.

“Do you have a calendar as a business? If you don’t have this you will not know what to publish tomorrow and you will not be able to even do your content scoring.

“Choosing your content formula will allow you know what type of content you want to create and also spying is allowed, research the latest trends going on social media platforms.

“Doing all of these will keep you relevant in your own space and have a voice as it is very important in creating a content,’’ she said.

Mr Michael Olanrewaju, Head of Growth, Cashaam, a social commerce platform and marketplace for micro-entrepreneurs, shared three secrets that SMEs could effectively run Facebook Ads on WhatsApp and Amazon.

Olanrewaju said the big idea behind running Facebook adverts that converts on WhatsApp and Amazon was very simple.

He noted that could be done by targeting ideal customer, optimising adverts for conversion and using the campaign budget optimisation.

Olanrewaju, therefore, shared the secrets that entrepreneurs needed to significantly increase their skills and grow their business.

“So, the first secret to revolutionizing your business is targeting your ideal customer, this means understanding their needs, interests and pain points and creating your adverts contents that speaks directly to them.

“So by doing this, you will be able to attract more of the right customers to your business.

“The second is optimising your adverts for conversion, using a particular objective called sales or conversion which involves constantly monitoring and tweaking your ads to make sure they are performing at their best.

“Thirdly, it’s the campaign budget optimisation; when you run out a campaign, you have to set up a budget for your campaign which is the total amount of money that you are going to spend on your adverts,’’ he said.(NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Olawunmi Ashafa

By Fabian Ekeruche

One of the Africa’s leading software companies, Tribearc, has entered into the Nigerian market with loads of exciting offers with feature that allows users to purchase its different products in the currency of their choice.

This is contained in a statement by Mr Opeyemi Emmanuel, the Chief Executive Officer of the company on Thursday in Lagos.

“Nigerians can pay for its products using their Naira debit cards.

“Tribearc also offers 99.9 per cent guaranteed email deliverability and automatic email verification ensuring all transactional mails are sent quickly.

“Tribearc is invested in helping marketers, developers, content creators and entrepreneurs gain more leads, verify these leads and nurture their customers with email automation.

“It apply’s useful APIs and webhooks, engage customers with its well tested free email marketing copies, build landing pages, host online courses and many more features,” Emmanuel said.

He said that Tribearc provides everything a developer and marketer needs to succeed in business.

“We believe that by sharing the best tools with Africans, we can continue to improve the business environment and empower the tech ecosystem,” Emmanuel said.

He noted that available statistics estimated that the number of email users across the world were 4.3 billion people as at 2022.

He said that this number would grow to at least 4.6 billion and yielding estimated revenue of at least 11 billion dollars by the end of 2023.

“This makes software providers like Tribearc ever more relevant,” Emmanuel said.

According to him, email marketing is fast becoming the go-to marketing strategy for many Nigerian businesses due to its affordability, detailed data analysis and good audience reach.

He said that email marketing continues to serve as a personal means of communicating a brand’s message while directly increasing traffic for a business’ website.

“Tribearc’s mandate is to ensure that more entrepreneurs, developers and marketers have the necessary digital tools to succeed in the African continent,” Emmanuel said.

He said that Tribearc would be hosting business experts, developers, communicators and tech enthusiasts to a webinar on the top trends in email marketing.

Emmanuel said that online event would take place on March, 17, 2023 by 10.00 a.m.

He said that the webinar is titled: “Email Marketing Trends: How To Scale Up Your Business by Over 50 per cent in 2023.”

Emmanuel added that the webinar would educate attendees on leveraging Artificial Intelligence to write powerful emails, email segmentation and deliverability, email marketing and campaign measurement, among others. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

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Edited by Chinyere Joel-Nwokeoma

By Florence Onuegbu

The United Nations Women and the Lagos State Government say they are collaborating to increase women’s participation in contract bidding.

Speaking during a Stakeholders Consultative Meeting at Ikeja, the Lagos State Head of Service, Mr Hakeem Muri-Okunola, said that women deserved all the encouragement and support of the state government, to enable them benefit more from opportunities in government’s procurement plans.

The Stakeholders Consultative Meeting had the theme: ”Affirmative Procurement for Women-owned Businesses in Lagos State”, and was organised by the UN Women, in collaboration with the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency.

Muri-Okunola said  there was need to ensure that competitiveness, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability, which were the distinguishing characteristics of a sound public procurement regime, were not compromised in the public procurement system.

Represented by Mrs Oluyemi Kalesanwo, Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, he said that the state government was always concerned about issues affecting women and other vulnerable groups.

According to him, respective administrations in Lagos have formulated various policies and implemented many programmes that are specially designed to promote gender equity, women empowerment and increased access to social services by the vulnerable and others within these categories of the society.

”It has been generally acknowledged that women have the potentials for making positive contributions to the socio-economic development of societies and nations.

”Indeed, quite a number of women have proved their mettle in various professions, vocations and businesses, thereby contributing to the progress of mankind and the task of nation building, locally and internationally.

”It is also a widely held view that, given the right environment, opportunities and support to operate, women can do much more than they are currently doing in business and other areas of human endeavour,” he said.

In his goodwill message, the Lagos state  Commissioner for Finance, Dr Rabiu Olowo, said that the Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu led administration believed strongly in the policy of inclusivity, to enable all strata of society to contribute to government’s programmes and also benefit from opportunities in government.

Olowo, who is also the Chairman, Lagos State Public Procurement Agency, said that the government would leave no stone unturned to ensure that women, youth and the old were economically advantaged.

He said that it was the desire of the administration to accelerate growth and development of the state, which could only be achieved when all residents, within productive age of the society were encouraged and empowered to engage in fruitful activities.

”Women are known to be imbued with a resilient spirit, a factor which makes them a force to be reckoned with in the informal sector of the economy of the state,” Olowo said.

In his welcome address, the Director-General, Lagos State Public Procurement Agency, Mr Fatai Onafowote acknowledged that the involvement of women in the procurement process was low.

Onafowote said that the enabling Law of the agency – the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency Law 2021 – does not discriminate against any gender.

He said that the law mandated PPA to regulate public procurement in the state, ensure due process, accountability and value-for-money in government’s expenditure on goods and services provided for residents of the state.

”Hence, public procurement in the state has been largely concerned with ensuring inclusiveness, competitiveness and transparency, which give equal right to all registered contractors and service providers, regardless of their gender.

”But this can only be done through a deliberate policy of the State Government.

”Therefore, for the agency to implement a deliberate policy that will give special considerations to women-owned businesses in the award of contracts as being advocated by UN Women, there is the need to make relevant provisions in the enabling Law of the agency,” Onafowote said.

Mrs Patience Ekechukwu, Programme Officer, Women’s Economic Empowerment, UN Women Nigeria said that women-owned/led businesses were a growing share of all enterprises in many African countries.

Ekechukwu said that public procurement represented an attractive market for women entrepreneurs, since it accounted for 15 to 30 per cent of GDP globally.

She said that public procurement created market opportunities that had long been recognised as an engine for growth for small and medium enterprises.

According to her, yet women-owned Small and Medium Enterprises (WSME) are severely underrepresented as suppliers, securing only an estimated one per cent of procurement contracts.

”In Nigeria, women remain under-represented as entrepreneurs accessing public procurement opportunities. Furthermore, most women-led businesses are in the informal sector, which excludes them from the participation threshold outlined in the Public Procurement Act.

”The Act requires businesses, which seek to supply public goods and services to be formally registered. Since most women-led businesses are unregistered and function within the informal economy, they are automatically excluded.

”Also, there are other requirements relating to tax and annual turnover, which most women entrepreneurs do not meet either.

”Other common barriers encountered by women in accessing public procurement include, corruption, bribery, favoritism/nepotism in government structures, including in the form of sexual harassment and gender-based violence.

”Similarly, women entrepreneurs very often, encounter difficulties due to limited information around the drafting of bids and lack technical capacities to execute the contract,” she said. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Vivian Ihechu

By Olatunde Ajayi

SIMS Digital Centres, the official representatives of Samsung, Royal, Panasonic and other international brands in Nigeria, has opened an ultra-modern branch in Ibadan, Oyo State.

The SIMS Executive Director (Corporate Services), Mr Fabian Uzor, in a statement on Wednesday said that the new SIMS Digital Centre would offer residents of the ancient city the quality and wide assortment of products.

Uzor said that the centre would provide residents and surrounding environs the best of electronics and home appliances where the value of a customer is a priority.

“Consumers do not have to go too far to enjoy the best combination of quality and price,” he said.

Uzor stated that the ultra-modern experience centre guarantees efficient customer service backed by innovative technology and excellent after-sales support to all customers.

“In line with this people-oriented market positioning, SIMS is also celebrating the opening of the new Digital Centre by offering amazing giveaways to members of the public as they make their purchases.

“The magnificent Ibadan outlet is the latest in SIMS’ continuously expanding network of very attractive digital centres strategically spread across major cities in Nigeria, like Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Owerri, Awka, Kaduna and Uyo,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the new SIMS state-of-the-art multi-level outlet was located at 224, Awolowo Way, Oke-Ado Street, Ibadan, Oyo State. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

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Edited by Chinyere Joel-Nwokeoma

Prof. Paul Griffith, TEXEM UK Faculty

By Abigael Joshua.

Paul Griffith, a London Business School-trained professor, has asserted that self-awareness is a compulsory management requirement for an organisation to succeed.

Griffith, who spoke in an interview session on the website of TEXEM UK (www.texem.co.uk), announced that he would be a faculty member at the TEXEM virtual session on “Self-awareness for Better Management of Change in Uncertain Times” from Feb. 11 to March 4.

The faculty, the world’s first Professor of Management to lead a team to launch a rocket, will share insights into why leaders should be more self-aware in the present uncertain times; at the capacity development programme.

Griffith also elaborated more on his role during the coming programme.

“I will explore the topic of “translating strategy into action. One of the critical challenges for any organisation is effectively executing its strategy.

“Over the last 20 years, research has consistently shown that 70 per cent of strategies fail to deliver the intended outcomes they were conceived to deliver.

“If organisations can address this issue, then they will significantly impact their performance,” he said.

Griffith said that self – awareness is essential for organisations because

a leader needs to create the best environment for his people to flourish.

He said that understanding one’s strengths and response to challenging situations helps one engage with people to ensure they can be supported as individuals to deliver exceptional results.

Griffith said the programme is pertinent to the needs of leaders all over the world

because understanding oneself is a crucial insight that successful leaders possess.

“Leadership is the ability to have people follow you. But first, you must know yourself before expecting people to follow you.

“Knowing your strengths and areas for development is a key part of maturing as a leader, and it helps leaders to recognise these traits in others to build successful organisations.

“We need to be aware of our reactions to situations so that we are able to empathise and engage with others around us more effectively, and that is why this TEXEM UK programme is relevant and necessary for all organisations,” he said.

According to Griffith,

the programme will leverage TEXEM UK’s tested and proven methodology that has helped over 4,000 executives win globally.

He spoke further on the benefits executives will gain from participating in the programme.

“This TEXEM UK programme allows executives to develop their self – awareness through a range of concepts, tools, and experiential sessions in a supportive environment.

“As a result, executives will gain insights into their talents and how to leverage them for their organisation’s benefit and “turbocharge” their careers,” Griffith said.

Another faculty member expected at the programme, Prof. Roger Delves, an Oxford alumnus, also shared insights into how leaders could win through better self-awareness.

Delves said there was no doubt that people presently live in times of enormous change.

“We are not the first to do so, but change and accompanying uncertainty are here and show no signs of departing. Therefore, leaders need to be self-aware to lead with clarity and purpose,” he said.

According to Delves, “Self-awareness is understanding what is important about me — my values, purpose, needs, strengths, weaknesses, and so on”.

“The more self-aware I am, the more confident I am, the more sure-footed I am around decision-making, and the more likely I am to be able to tell others what I stand for.

“Thus, offering them expectations of behaviour around concepts like personal integrity, for example, which are very important to followers or team members, if you want them to follow you.

“Leaders who lack this awareness will find that change and uncertainty are hard to lead through, and their followers will find such leaders unequal to the task,” he said.

Delves said the TEXEM UK programme is a rare opportunity for leaders and managers to immerse themselves in learning how to be better at what they do.

Delves also said that “an essential programme like this is packed with proven ways to do things better, ways to approach things better, ways to think about things better, and ways to resolve things better”.

“It is exactly what all managers need to take that step up to the next performance level,” he added.

Delves said participants would be guided by robust models that have repeatedly proven their efficiency and effectiveness in businesses worldwide.

Amb. Charles Crawford and Prof. Randall Peterson of London Business School are two other faculties that would help deliver the live sessions of the programme. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

Edited by Razak Owolabi