Participants in a conference held Saturday in Tunis on “Digitisation in service of Economic Recovery in North Africa 2022” were unanimous in emphasising the importance of pooling the efforts of various actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem so as to speed up digital transformation in the region.
The event was organised by the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Executive Development (CEED) in collaboration with Meta Platforms,
“In two or three years, the share of digital evonomy in the global GDP will hover around 25%, ” Moroccan entrepreneur and digital consultant Nasser Kettatni said. There is no other option but to put in place necessary mechanisms for digital transformation.
A public-private partnership needs to be set up to increase training in this area, he added. Public authorities, enterprises, startups, universities and various actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem are urged to work in concert to lay the foundations for a digital economy in North Africa.
Business Development Manager at One Tech Business Solutions Atef Loukil said there was modest progress on digital transformation in North Africa. Very little investment was made in a sector with an enormous untapped potential.
” Investment in digital technologies was not supported in Tunisia over the recent years which resulted in technical debts. This can jeopardise digitisation in the country, ” Loukil further said.
Commenting on the lack of experts in this field, META’s Head of Service Industries: FS, Mobility, Travel for the MENA region Joachim Marciano said the US tech giant launched recently an initiative dubbed LoveLocal, a consumer campaign to amplify the voice of local small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the MENA region amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is a programme designed to inform and familiarise small and medium-sized enterprises with digital transformation. Forty webinars in Arabic, French and English were broadcast free of charge on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram). 100,000 entrepreneurs in the MENA region joined these platforms.
President of CEED Tunisia Hichem Elloumi said Meta launched in October Boost with Facebook, a programmme geared towards Tunisian entrepreneurs. The aim is to train and help 1,000 SMEs face up to the pandemic.
Elloumi said the conference, attended by 250 SMEs, offfered the opportunity to shed light on digitisation as ” a lever of economic recovery and development.”
CEED Tunisia was created in 2014; it is member of the international network of CEED, a non-governmental organisation which helps entrepreneurs expand their businesses in emerging markets.
Source: Tap News Agency