 Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. This is Juan Carlos Tomas. I'm the Global Entrepreneurship Director at Technosur. Today we're going to talk about the role of technology in helping micro-small and medium-sized business to recover from COVID-19. I'm joined today by my colleague Alice Wawero, just the regional Entrepreneurship Manager for Technosur East Africa. I'm an expert on the micro retailer sector. Welcome, Alice. Thank you. And we should be soon joined by Rudo Mudambir-Ranwa. I hope I'm pronouncing the last name right. Just the lead of CSR at EMEA and APAC for Moody's. Just having some technical difficulties to join but let's get started in the conversation with a little bit of a video on why this topic is important. Well, hopefully Rudo can join us as well. I've been into this business for the past three years and I've been a participant of SmartLooker for the last one and a half year. I started the business because I wanted to come as self-employed and also to be able to serve the community. There are challenges to make it easier for me to protect myself. I'm happy to be able to do what I want now. Keeping of records. I calculate the daily sales. Sometimes I try to keep the daily sales because I'm not keeping records. I have challenges. I'm happy to be able to do what I want because I'm not keeping records. I'm happy about Technosuv because I'm also working on keeping the customer relationship with Technosuv. I'm happy to be able to relate to the company I work for and the customers. Technosuv connect with Fooji Capital. I work for a couple of years. I work with Technosuv as a stock, I'm also interested in making money. I hope you can, you can all be able to see what's that video. Welcome again everyone. I see more people join. I think one of our panelists is experiencing some problems. The organization at SoCAP is trying to fix the problem but in the meantime let's get started. We have a lot to cover and and we're very honored to have here in the state, Chalice Waweido, who has been leading our work in technical service work in East Africa and as an expert in the micro retailer sector. The topic for today's conversation is around how technology can help micro and small and medium-sized businesses to recover from COVID and what opportunities arise from that. Let's start reflecting on why this topic is so important and I just want to present a few figures. Micro and small businesses should be seen as key for economic recovery. I will say inclusive economic recovery worldwide. MSMEs contribute more than 70 percent of employment and more than half of GDP. So there's no way that the economy will recover without having MSMEs recovering as well. But they were particularly hit by this pandemic. In Nigeria, according to recent Jerry Powell's survey, 85 percent of Nigeria's wholesale and retail traders were forced to close at some point during the crisis and 91 percent of this business reported zero income during the closure. Going towards the other side of the planet, in Colombia, 73 percent of the small and medium-sized firms reported laying off employees. And a recent technical survey found that micro retailers in four African countries experienced a 41 percent decline in average sales during the initial month of the pandemic. So very, very hard picture for micro and small businesses. But a silver lining is that entrepreneurs all over the world have adapted. One of the most important adaptations has been the adoption of technology and we have seen that in technosurf programs around the world. We are here to talk as a sale about how entrepreneurs in the global south are adopting technology and what that means and how we can support that process and what the best person to discuss that, that Alice Waweru, who has been leading our work over the last years on micro retailer development across Africa. Please feel free to start adding your questions. The idea is that I have a few questions for Alice and for Rudo, if she can join, feel free to start adding your questions in the chat. I hope we can later in decision we can address all of them. So Alice, you have let technosurf work with micro retailers as I mentioned. Would you talk a little bit about why micro retailers are so important and how micro retailers have been impacted by the pandemic? So thank you so much for the callous and thank you everyone for joining. As you have seen in the video, we have painted the picture of the micro retailers that we work with. Often the importance is not always thought of, but they are very important because they create a lot of employment, they create jobs, they create incomes for communities and in addition they also bring a wide variety of basic consumer needs that is needed on a daily basis to the communities. They are so important because also about 80% of all first moving consumer goods are basic goods. It's moved through this micro retail outlets. These are the corner shops, the shop owners have communities and this community is mostly living in the marginalized areas or in the informal settlements and they are communities that are usually not served by based on big retailers like supermarkets. So these are the outlets that really bring the essential goods and services right to the community's doorsteps. Because these are micro retail outlets are very important. Technosub has worked with over tens of thousands of these micro enterprises, building their capacity, supporting them to grow their income and to serve their communities a lot better. And we have not only worked in Kenya, we have worked in other African countries, really equipping them with the right skills to grow to the next level, connect to the markets, connect to the supply chain, utilize digital technology to make their operations a lot more efficient and even be able to serve the customers a lot better. We believe that if these thousands of micro enterprises are supported, then we are supported the wider economy of these countries that we are operating and we are improving the livelihoods of the shop owners and their families and their communities. So even though these outlets are very critical and they are very important, as Juan Carlos has said, they have suffered significant challenges, especially during the COVID-19 crisis. A lot of them experiencing broken value chains. They were unable to get products from their suppliers and manufacturers because of the disruptions that occurred because of the pandemic. They also suffered significant loss of their customers. People started going to their shops because traditionally these are outlets that wait for customers to come to their shops. And as a result, the percentage of the customers that visited there, their business is declined. And on top of that, you meant that their sales also went down. And as Juan Carlos has reported, a lot of them reported a huge decline of sales during the pandemic. What we realize is that even prior to COVID, traditionally these outlets that are basically analog, they were not using digital technology that drove the economies of the developed countries, even during the pandemic. And therefore, they were not able to quickly embark on digital technology to help them move from where they were, where they were stuck to the next level. And that's where we came in as technologists. I'm here to come in and help them utilize digital technology to spotlight new opportunities, spotlight opportunities to connect with your customers, to connect with the suppliers, to connect with manufacturers, and be able to survive the crisis and even grow their sales at their incomes. So thank you, Juan Carlos. Thank you, Alice. That's very very helpful to get a better picture of what's what's going on in the ground. And congratulations for the great work you're leading across several countries in Africa on supporting these entrepreneurs. Let me welcome very quickly Rudo, Madame B. Rangua from Modis Foundation. I'm glad, Rudo, that you managed to solve last minute's technical issue. Thank you for a SOCAP organization for jumping in so promptly. Rudo, we are discussing about the importance of micro and small entrepreneurs in this economic recovery or the economic recovery we all want to see starting pretty soon. And the role of technology on that. I know Modis has carried out a lot of research about how the station is impacting these firms. And if you could briefly tell us a little bit of what that research is telling us is already flagging any relevant insights to get this conversation started. Yes, of course. I hope you can hear me, okay? Oh, we hear you a lot. I'm clear. Wonderful. Thank you. So thank you so much for that introduction, Juan Carlos. So as Juan Carlos mentioned, I'm regional head of corporate social responsibility here at Modis. I oversee the EMEA and Asia Pacific region and has been working quite well with the technoserve team. Really pleased to be here to share some of our Modis research has picked up around digitization and hopefully add value to this conversation. So at a macro level, we all know that the adoption of digital technologies has far reaching impact on productivity, growth, labor markets, industry and credit. And if we just break it down, so in terms of spurring the global productivity boom, which will be especially important as productivity growth in a lot of countries is at an all time low. A simple example is this is sort of looking at, how technology has improved production is, we look at from the time taken from the invention of a product to the adoption of the product has been reduced significantly due to the introduction of technology. We're not spending as much time between that innovation and adoption process anymore. And so that will ultimately start to boost that and other activities and influencing factors will improve the productivity boom. Similarly, there is the creation of new types of work. So technology is starting to act as a substitute to labor, repetitive tasks performed by both highly and low skilled labor will be automated. And digitization sort of looking at governments will allow governments to operate more effectively and target public services better. Now, if we bring it down to the enterprise level, the adoption of digital technologies has accelerated by several years. And this improves the customer experiences improves how enterprises are interacting with the supply chain, as well as some of the internal operations of these enterprises. And similarly, the surveys are showing us that from a consumer's perspective, the adoption of digital technologies has accelerated even more so because of the pandemic. Now, you know, if I if I if I want to look at the the context in which we are operating here with the techniques of partnership with us in Latin America or in Africa, digital technology is really allow those forward looking businesses to overcome some of the challenges of working within the emerging market context. And digitization provides an opportunity for innovation, and ultimately to address a massive admit demand. Now, those are kind of the key findings that I wanted to share today from my from the research that we've had on college. Thank you. That's really insightful. And if I if I hear you correctly, technology is has been accelerating this adoption is ringing. It has served us a tool to overcome these challenges, but also is bringing in more opportunities to to entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Alice, that what what technologies have micro retailer adopted in your view that are bringing more opportunities to overcome challenges and even I'm here from you, even grow their businesses. What practitioners organizations like, like Technoserve, or others can do to support this entrepreneurs transition to the incorporation of more technologies in your experience. Okay, thank you so much. For the micro retailers, the kind of technology they're using, it's really basic. It's a WhatsApp, Facebook, SMS, that they are familiar with, and that are easy and accessible. Easy to use and accessible to them. For example, we worked with an entrepreneur who was running a small green shop in Nairobi. And between the pandemic fears and rising prices, shopper stayed away from her shop. And at the worst point, she had seven, she was making only $7 for sales per week. Our business advisor who was working closely with her helped her to identify ways to pilot her businesses. And one was digitally enabled sale. One way was through digitally enabled sales. So she started advertising her products on Facebook and taking her orders through the WhatsApp and following up with her customers through WhatsApp and also SMSs. And what we found is that through these basic applications, she was able to increase her sales tenfold. And she realized that she was not going to stop there. It was going to, you know, she was going to make it a lasting change in her business, a whole transformation of her business. And she was going to make her business to be fully online, even though she was still going to keep the brick and wall kind of an outlet. So even after the pandemic, she decided that this is her new way of reaching her customers, of engaging the suppliers and engaging the wider ecosystem that was supporting her to grow her businesses. So entrepreneurs are using technology and mobile apps to track sales and eventually as well. And this is really helping them to strengthen their record keeping processes, which makes them makes better decision and makes their businesses also visible, not only to themselves, but also to financiers and also to suppliers to understand how the goods are moving at the micro digital level. So to help the entrepreneurs, we have also digitized, we had to digitize our operations so it's not only using digital technology to help the the micro digital do better business, but even as an organization, we had to figure out how to make our operations digital to be able to reach beneficiaries a lot better. Our old model of providing support directly in shops truly needed to change. And so now depending on the enterprise you are, we identify the profile, the kind of phone that they have, the kind of technology that they are able to use. We are able to deliver training via, you know, the smartphone applications via WhatsApp or through SMS and to some even through phone calls. We have had to tailor our training content, really strengthening it to what our entrepreneurs need. And that's really making a whole lot of difference to the way we are engaging the entrepreneurs and how the entrepreneurs are running their businesses. Thank you. Thank you Alice. That's great insight. We tend to get distracted by the fastest technology available sometimes and if I hear you correctly, what make the difference can be the simplest of the text available. It could be a WhatsApp group to promote your products or to take orders. So very, very important insight is to basically use whatever makes sense even to make a simple one. Rudo, one of the areas of multi-research has been access to finance which reaches usually a big, big constraint. Even more so during this crisis. How the utilization is impacting that base on your studies. Thanks Juan Carlos. So, I mean, when we home, if we hone in particularly on the micro retailers that are serviced through this, the technical partnership, we know that, you know, digitization has had a profound impact on access to finance, you know, but systemically and also just very practically allowing that access. So, first of all, technology is opening up new revenue streams because a lot of these micro retailers are also servicing people who are unbanked. And so, you know, by introducing technology, they're bringing in new customers from low income and rural populations as well as giving these small merchants access to, you know, greater visibility of their business outputs, greater visibility of their finances, understanding their stock levels. And this has all been facilitated by the new wave of technology, particularly for the unbanked. You know, mobile money accounts are now the first point of entry for many of these micro retailers. So, you know, as Alice mentioned, a lot of the technology is really basic in terms of, you know, through WhatsApp, through Facebook, et cetera, you know, and the growing mobile phone penetration in low income populations combined with the use of the small shops as banking agents is providing that first level entry point for many, particularly in emerging markets. And then we have the issue of, you know, when it comes to mainstream finance, there are some barriers around, you know, whether you have the right ID, identification details to help you to access mainstream finance. And again, digital IDs and electronic payments have broken these barriers. And it's brought many of these sort of micro retailers into the formal financial sector. You know, for, you know, in Latin America and in Africa, we've seen these electronic payment platforms allowing, you know, the underbanked to progress from sort of occasional cash withdrawals to kind of really addressing, you know, their cash flow through having access to that information, savings, insurance products. So the very idea that you can have digitization facilitating these IDs and break into these barriers is, you know, it's really impressive. And then just to ask you to touch on the data analytics and artificial intelligence, which is sort of the next level, and it's actually really playing a part in even the most basic of technology implement, so through mobile phones or Facebooks. The data analytics and the artificial intelligence are really allowing some of the financial, you know, fintech organizations to offer credit to unbanked clients by analyzing some of the data that is held in the smartphone. I mean, if we touch on kind of the main impact on access to finance, I would say those are the three. And I think it's, you know, as an attest, it's having a profound impact on the growth of the micro retailers that you're working with. Yeah. Thank you, Rolo. That's very, very helpful. This is your report is available, I think, publicly, isn't it? Rolo, is the research is it something people can access to or is very insightful? Yes, I can certainly share the report with the attendees of this session. Our reports are not usually available sort of open source, certainly not all of them, but I can share the ones we're talking about today with the group today. That's really fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have a few questions from the audience. I want to make sure we touch on those and please keep those questions coming. Robert is asking, what are some ways you train up skilled entrepreneurs? Alice, I don't know if you want to take that one. Thank you very much, Robert. So we identified the key skills gaps that the micro enterprises had. And one of the major skill gaps that we found was they had some form of limited capability to keep sufficient record keeping, books of records for their businesses. And a lot of them also needed a lot of skills to connect to their customers. They needed a lot of skills to manage their inventory first in first out and even connect to the suppliers. So we put together some elaborate curriculum or training modules that addressed basic financial management for the micro retailers, addressed inventory management, addressed supply chain management, and also customer care. And we have found that through these skills, they're making significant increase on their revenues and they're improving the efficiency of their businesses. And recently we realized that digital technology is a very key skill that we needed to continuously keep on putting the entrepreneurs with, introducing the basic digital skills to allow them, utilize the various app business applications that they needed to use for their businesses. Thank you, Alice. Another interesting question from Chrisila now is whether you have found any difference in inapting between women and men entrepreneurs and how programs are addressing that? I don't know, Rudo, if that's coming up in your research or Alice, if you want to take the question from the program perspective that you're leading, I mean, feel free to jump in where it feels comfortable with that question. I mean, I'll just take this one that I can add a little bit on around the gender mainstream. Thank you, Rudo. Thank you, Chrisila for this question. For every business, most of the times women are usually disadvantaged, especially in the global south. And I would want to say that during COVID-19, there were even more disadvantaged because of the crisis, because of the burden of care that came with them taking care of their families. And they had very little time even to support their businesses. So that in itself made women businesses really go down. And what that means is that there's significant gap between them being able to make sufficient income like their male counterpart. And when it comes into training, we found that women entrepreneurs were not catching up with our training modules as the male counterpart because of the time of the training, the time of the training that we were offering, some of the women would be busy probably taking care of their domestic chores. And therefore, we had to delay change our training timing so that we can be able to reach the women. We made our training so flexible such that we make it, we offer it during the whole week so that once it's online, women can choose the time that is appropriate for them to, you know, to really engage with it. And our business counselors wouldn't be able to answer any question that the business, that the women entrepreneurs would be having. So what we realized is that technology is bringing also a gap to the women entrepreneurs. It's not utilized very well. And a lot of them also had fewer smartphones as compared to the men. So even helping them be able to access smartphones so that they can be able to access our full package of training became very critical even during the time of the pandemic. So we have identified the key critical gaps that are making the women fall off or be left behind. And we are working towards addressing all those skills gaps, including things of training, accessing digital technology, accessing digital, even the internet itself, so that they are able to access all these apps and solutions and be able to run their businesses effectively. Maybe Ruta you could add. Yeah, Alice, I think you covered the majority of it. I think women have, we know that the issues around the unequal access to, you know, some of these opportunities is pervasive. You know, there's an issue of the kind of general challenges to women accessing these opportunities, you know, having role models, etc. You know, some challenges that are seen as quite general, but we know that they have a really significant impact on their ability to actually start businesses, run sustainable businesses and grow their businesses. So as Alice mentioned, things like, you know, the way that they have to split up their time between home and work and everything else that, you know, women carry an extra burden. The research shows that, you know, across the board, these are the challenges that are met by all women entrepreneurs. In many markets, they have been significant gaps in bridging, there have been significant strides in bridging those gaps through working with governments, through, you know, some of the more gender mainstreaming that's happening with corporates, corporate foundations and other funders of this type of intervention to help women entrepreneurs. But we do know that we're still a long way away. They're still the issue of cultural norms that are really present, particularly in the emerging markets. But I do think, you know, certainly my experience of working with TechnoServe and in supporting the programs that we have in this portfolio, we're really proud of the fact that we've been able to reach, I think the majority of the portfolio and Alice keep me honest here, the majority of the portfolio is women that we are accessing through the smart duke program. But I think that's really down to, you know, as Alice mentioned, the implementing partners thinking flexibly around addressing some of these barriers. I think the more general barriers are addressed, you know, the more cumulative the turnaround is all the way up to policy level. Thank you so much, Raul and Alice. Great, great experience and insights coming from that. We have another question from Raul. He's wondering whether helping the Sesame's digitize their accounting and financial can help in building enough great history or worthiness to get access to formal finance in East Africa. Any thoughts around that, Ruth or Alice? Yeah, I could take that. Thanks, Raul, for that question. And allow me to say that digitizing accounting and financial systems for the micro-littles is one first big step towards creating a lot of visibility to the financial systems in the country. The micro-littles have been 98% cash business and 90% of the micro-littles have not been keeping records that are credible to any financial. I wouldn't say that we have reached there, but it's a big step towards creating a lot of visibility around the transactions that happens in the micro-littles, leading to, you know, some form of credit history around backed by the transactions that happens in the micro-littles outlets. What we have done in the past with the financials, like we mentioned before, is they have been deliberate about supporting the micro-littles, supporting them in terms of observing their credit history, observing their transaction for a period of time, and being able to determine a credit rating and be able to finally on lead to the micro-littles. The micro-littles may not fit in the tradition of financial systems, but the financials needs to look at developing appropriate financial product that works for the micro-littles. Alice, I think the other point to that is that, you know, I think you're very right, that's a big first step. I think a lot of these interventions need to happen in tandem. They need to be layered with, you know, other interventions like that digital literacy, the infrastructure, the enabling environment from, you know, the governments as well to help with some of this adoption. And like you said, you know, the financial services, sort of understanding the risk profile of some of the micro-littles and innovating accordingly. Thank you. That's very interesting, Rudo. And I wonder whether there are opportunities for investors themselves to help in this process for the utilization? Yeah, I think absolutely. You know, the lockdown and social distancing and everything that we've experienced in the last 18 months has really imposed a radical rethinking of business models. So everyone moves their operations online, you know, people are working smarter and they really had to do this within short notice. And really the majority of the non-digital MSMEs make up about 90% of businesses, particularly in emerging markets. And they are also serving non-digital customers. So, you know, to ensure that the business, the enterprises as well as the consumers are not getting left behind, I think there's definitely a need for a collaborative approach, you know, between as I mentioned, you know, the implementing agencies, investors, corporations, policymakers to encourage these digital solutions, particularly for this large offline market. And, you know, like I said, just now, a lot of these interventions need to happen in tandem between the technical assistance, the infrastructure, the layering of digital products on already familiar offline processes. And I think it's important to really start channeling, you know, capital expertise, you know, within this space. I do think that there was, I think it goes without saying that there was a lot of opportunity here, you know, for investors, for corporate foundations, for, you know, developing agencies alike. Thank you, Rolo. That's very helpful. Alice, the problem is huge. I mean, the challenge is huge and the opportunity is huge. So, what work remains to be done to support micro retailers adoption of technology? How do we keep the momentum going? Okay, thank you so much. Yeah, they still need to continuously build the capacity of the micro enterprises or the micro retailers to be able to utilize available digital technology. We are incorporating some basic digital literacy modules in our training curriculum. So, building the digital capability remains to be huge for us and huge in the space that other players can actually come in and help build the digital capabilities so that we ensure that any micro enterprise or any micro retailer that is excluded is not limited to behind from taking advantage of the digital economy and growing their businesses. We also need to support the micro entrepreneurs to identify the high value apps. I would imagine that in a world where there are thousands and thousands of applications, even the micro entrepreneurs themselves, they are lost in terms of identifying which apps would make a lot of value or would add a lot of value to their businesses. So, supporting them to identify the high value apps and solutions that are suitable for the enterprises is very important. And what we are doing at the moment is helping them battle together the useful business apps and working towards helping them have a one-click solutions. So, these are apps around basic things that they require on a daily basis like record keeping, access to finance, inventory management, and even the training applications. And they can be able to click on all these useful applications for their businesses. This also need for continuous testing of solutions that can be used offline. As the cost of internet is still very prohibitive in the developing countries and even more so to the micro entrepreneurs. So, more offline solutions that really truly make a lot of difference to the micro retailers are still needed. And there is room for a lot of partnerships that brings the right solutions to the micro retailers and the micro enterprises to innovate and to bring solutions that want to connect these micro entrepreneurs and micro retailers to the wider ecosystem. Thank you Alcalos. Thank you. Thank you Alice. Rudo, any thoughts on this? MoDIS has been playing this field for a while. Supporting programs, advancing research. What should be coming next? Where the energies should be focused in terms of supporting better adoption or more adoption of technology or a smarter adoption of technology among micro entrepreneurs? Sure. I think from a funder's perspective, what is really worth for us is having an evaluative approach to how we fund programs. So, we want to have conversations with partners like Technosurf to understand when we started funding, this is what we were focused on. As the needs evolve, as the landscape evolves, what is it that is a priority in terms of upskilling these entrepreneurs? I think it's important for us to continue to have those types of conversations and channel our funding, our expertise to the most emerging needs that are coming up front. Secondly, I think leveraging technologies that you have within your organization, our partnerships are not solely based on grants. It's about leveraging the expertise and the skills of our business. We have solutions for SMEs around cash flow, most recently around ESG score predictors. So, leveraging our core expertise as well as our funding to to address the most pressing needs for our partners. And I think to keep the dialogue open and to evolve as the needs change. Thank you so much, Rulo. That's very helpful. I was reflecting what are my main takeaways from this conversation and I will say personally, I hear from both of you a user-centric approach. So, let's use the technology that suits the best. Let's focus on how we help women overcome the challenges to interfacing rather than imposing a particular technology that may be fancy at the moment or a solution that may sound great on paper. So, there's a lot of learning and a lot of trying and testing and figuring out what's working and what's not and iterating around that. That's my main takeaways here. I'm sure all the 30 participants or so that joined the session had their own learnings and I hope everyone had fruitful, found that this decision was fruitful and interesting. Thank you so much to our panelists, Rulo and Alice. It has been a huge pleasure for me to be able to moderate this conversation. A lot of great food for thought here and thank you for all our attendees and to SOCAP for organizing this session.