What we’ve learned from serving 1000s of Africans SMEs this year

After a busy year, working with thousands of entrepreneurs across Africa in our ‘new world’, we’ve been thinking deeply about the future of business development support, and how the crisis brought about by Covid-19 might in fact open up new opportunities to serve more SMEs, more effectively.

Our new report – ‘Business Development Support in a Time of Crisis’ – outlines our learnings since March 2020, including:

• Why we believe virtual business development support, which has been the subject of much criticism pre-Covid, can be a higher impact format for entrepreneurs
• Why Covid-19 presents a chance to address gender imbalance in BDS access
• Opportunities for deeper integration between BDS and finance access to address the missing middle, supported by new data
• Opportunities for pan-African programmes and geographical collaboration for SMEs
• Why working with entrepreneurs on mindset and emotional intelligence is even more critical in tough times

AMI believes that Covid-19 presents a unique opportunity for the re-shaping of support for micro, small and medium enterprises, at a time when entrepreneurs need support more than ever, challenging traditional thinking on everything from scale and geography to data and digital connections. We hope you find this report useful reading as you consider your own planning and initiative design, and would welcome feedback.

To learn more about our work with SMEs, or to explore a partnership, please contact our Director of Partnerships Andrea Warriner at andrea@africanmanagers.org