SMEs in Ghana need Special Mobile Services

By Fred SARPONG

The contributions of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to modern economies cannot be taken for granted. It looks like it affects every aspect of the society, economy, political and cultural environment of this country, Ghana.
Taken into consideration of what goes on in many nations, it look as if well developed and necessary policies and regulations have been put in place to adequately exploit the potential of ICT for socio-economic development. Of course, Ghana is no exemption and more need to be done.
Streamlining costs and improving success in Ghana’s economy are key objectives for small businesses to grow despite the difficulties the country experience.
One of the communication technologies, whose application has become pervasive, is the mobile telephone, its deployment, access and use has gained much prominence in Ghana and the world at large.
There is clear evidence that with the emerging of more mobile operators in the country, more businesses will be created and it will offer more jobs for Ghanaians.
However, it is important to note those small business operators or small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country are also given millions of cedis to the mobile phone operators.
In an interview with the Minister of Communications, Haruna Iddrisu indicted that this government has realize the SMEs sector hold key to the economy of this country because they constitute over 80% workforce of the economy.
In order for the government to recognize the effort of the SMEs sector, the government will soon take an initiative which will help improve activities of SMEs in Ghana. He noted that one of these initiatives is to allow the mobile operator’s to offers some packages for small businesses operators.
Hannah Tetteh, the Minister of Trade and Industry also has said that the SMEs industry players have been neglected for too long and for that matter corporate bodies must help to assist them since they are the main successes of Ghana’s economy.
A lot of products and services are been introduce every now and then by MTN, Vodafone, Kasapa, Tigo and Zain, but which of these products does improve the activities of SMEs in the country.
Mobile phones have become an integral part of daily life used by over 10 millions Ghanaians especially those in the SMEs. Those persons or the traders now take for granted the ability to communicate by phone at any time, from any place, and to any part of the country in order to improve their business activities and also give revenue to the operators.
It is now time for MTN, Vodafone, Kasapa, Tigo and Zain to develop special products merely for those in the SMEs sector to enhance the operation of these businesses and also generate revenue for themselves (operators).
There is the need for the mobile phone companies to develop innovative services that will meet the changing needs of users; for example, developing mobile telephone into a multi-tasking platform that combine several services into one.
The mobile operators can also import into the country mobile phones with special design for SMEs operators. This can be done by allowing the manufactures to introduce special software purposely for SMEs.