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Facebook hosts forum to support West African SMEs

04 Feb 2016, 04:57 pm
Financial Nigeria
Facebook hosts forum to support West African SMEs

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- The focus was on how Facebook can help small businesses reach the right customers at less cost and get high returns.

Facebook Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook hosted a roundtable with small and medium-sized enterprises from Ghana and Nigeria in Accra on Tuesday. The forum was part of the social networking giant’s efforts to support entrepreneurship in West Africa.

The focus was on how Facebook can help small businesses reach the right customers at less cost and get high returns.

According to a statement by the social networking site, 54 per cent of people on Facebook in Nigeria are connected to a small or medium business. There were 15 million active Facebook users in Nigeria as of June 30.

More than 50 million small businesses around the world actively use Facebook Pages and over 2.5 million SMEs worldwide use Facebook’s enterprise services to promote their businesses. The company believes SMEs in West Africa can also tap into the resources the Facebook platform provides to expand their reach and be profitable.  

“Facebook is significantly cheaper than other channels. Actually, it’s not even comparable,” says Dejuwon Isola-Osobu, founder and CEO, Jayosbie, a Nigeria-based online men’s fashion retailer. In one of its recent campaigns, the company said it gained 14,000 clicks at the cost of $260.

“Africa is home to some of the world’s most vibrant and exciting small businesses, and these enterprises are the backbone of the economy,” Said Nunu Ntshingila, Head of Africa for Facebook, said. “The number one reason they succeed or fail is their ability to attract customers. As more and more people turn to smartphones and the web to discover and connect with businesses, Facebook is the best platform for African SMEs to promote their brands.”

Skin Gourmet Limited, a female-led producer of organic, natural and chemical-free skincare products in Ghana also said it got a significant return on investment in the form of more engagement and brand awareness after posting and boosting posts on Facebook.

Accra Good Markets, a pop-up event for vendors to sell their products, also in Ghana said Facebook is its only marketing channel for reaching vendors and shoppers alike and it has seen tremendous results through its posting and highly targeted advertising activity on Facebook.

Akataasia Clothing in Ghana uses WhatsApp, a messaging services in Facebook’s portfolio which includes Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

In 2015, Facebook held 225 events across 19 countries, reaching over 200,000 small business owners with training on how to use its platform effectively to drive sales and marketing goals. The company said Africa will be a focus region for such events for the rest of this year.

Nicola Mendelsohn, EMEA vice-president at Facebook Mendelsohn, said, “Technology is driving real progress. When I visit Africa, this comes to life in every conversation and with every story I hear about entrepreneurs creating jobs and solving problems with technology’s help. We’re invigorated by how Ghanaian and Nigerian SMEs are using Facebook to grow brand awareness and boost engagement with their customers. We look forward to doing more to support entrepreneurs as they build their businesses.”


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