PEPZ to put entrepreneurs on digital map
PEPZ Team Leader Bayo Akindeinde, second left, with InfoBwana Chief Executive Officer Joseph Brown and members of the PEPZ and Best of Zambia team.
Entrepreneurs have a chance to showcase their businesses to large-scale corporate customers thanks to a new partnership between the Private Enterprise Programme Zambia (PEPZ) and online business portal Best of Zambia.
The agreement between PEPZ’s Business Linkages Programme (BLP) and InfoBwana, which runs thebestofzambia.com website, aims to help Zambian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) better participate in the supply chain of larger established companies in all sectors.
Under the collaboration, InfoBwana will raise awareness of PEPZ’s Business Linkages Programme, both online and via its database of Zambian businesses. With PEPZ guidance and support, it will add PEPZ information to thebestofzambia.com, including the easy identification of PEPZ certified businesses who meet the criteria for inclusion in their Business Linkages Programme. In turn, PEPZ will facilitate ‘Best of Zambia’ membership subscriptions for both PEPZ certified SMEs that PEPZ is working with, as well as large companies looking for local suppliers.
The partnership will also ensure the long-term sustainability of PEPZ’s business-to-business web portal www.b2b.co.zm, which is under construction. PEPZ is a five-year project funded by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) to create jobs and contribute to the diversification of the Zambian economy.
“Greater business linkages between large firms that dominate the economy and local suppliers can help to link lead industries to sectors in which the poor are employed,” said PEPZ Team Leader Bayo Akindeinde.
“There is a strong commercial case for large companies to purchase more locally thereby shortening import-dependent supply chains, improving their carbon footprint, encouraging Zambian businesses to be more innovative and remain competitive and, indirectly creating local jobs with SME suppliers.”
According to the Zambia Information & Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA), Zambia has an estimated 6.1 million mobile internet users and mobile phone penetration has reached three quarters of the population – 11.6 million subscribers out of a population of 15 million. That’s nearly half of the Zambian population now using mobile internet. Thebestofzambia.com provides Zambian companies with a platform to reach this growing local audience, as well as tap into regional and international opportunities.
Over the last seven years InfoBwana has developed www.thebestofzambia.com into an online business advertising portal designed to assist the economic development of Zambia by enabling entrepreneurs and businesses to source suppliers for products or services. Through its subscription-based business advertising service, the website also empowers Zambian businesses to grow from being purely bricks and mortar businesses that require physical footfall in order to trade, to businesses that can also generate trade via the internet.
“Every day, we press on with our vision to get Zambian businesses online, provide people with useful business information and share our beloved country and continent with the world. We are very happy to be working with PEPZ whose vision and goals are so complementary to our own,” says InfoBwana Chief Executive Officer Joseph Brown.