Zoho, a technology company that provides cloud-based business applications, has partnered with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), the government agency responsible for supporting the development of the country’s micro, small and medium enterprises, to expand access to cloud technology for Nigerian businesses.
Under the program, Zoho will make wallet credits worth up to ₦20 billion available to as many as 25,000 eligible MSMEs associated with SMEDAN. The initiative is aligned with SMEDAN’s GROW Nigerian strategy, which focuses on formalisation, access to finance and markets, productivity and digital adoption.
The program also comes alongside an ongoing partnership between SMEDAN and the Corporate Affairs Commission to facilitate the free registration of 250,000 businesses. The initiative is intended to bring more MSMEs into the formal economy and support their access to business opportunities.
“Our focus at SMEDAN is to ensure that small businesses are able to move from survival to growth and prosperity. That means helping entrepreneurs formalise, improve productivity, reach new markets and build businesses that can compete, said the Director general/CEO of SMEDAN, Charles Odii. Digital capability is now an important part of that journey, and this partnership with Zoho gives thousands of MSMEs within our ecosystem another practical pathway to strengthen how they operate and grow.”
The credits can be used across more than 60 Zoho applications, depending on each business’s operational needs. Among the examples cited by the companies are Zoho Workplace, its business email and collaboration suite; Bigin by Zoho CRM, a CRM platform for small businesses; and Zoho Books, a cloud accounting platform.
The partnership also includes training sessions, workshops, one-on-one business consultations and ongoing technical support. Zoho and SMEDAN will jointly support outreach to eligible businesses and monitor adoption and impact throughout the program.
“MSMEs are fundamental to Nigeria’s economic development, but technology can only deliver its full potential when businesses are able to access and effectively use it,” said Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria.
“Through this partnership with SMEDAN, we are reducing the access barrier to adopting world-class business technology while providing businesses with the training, consultation and support they need to leverage cloud technology to streamline their operations, and catapult their growth.
The partnership also reflects Zoho’s transnational localism strategy, which combines our global technology expertise with efforts to create self-sustaining local economic clusters. Through this approach, we aim to deepen our contribution to Nigeria’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and support the development of a more digitallyenabled and resilient MSME sector”
The program combines access to software with training and operational support, with the companies focusing on helping participating businesses integrate cloud applications into their day-to-day operations.
