Business

Driving Resilient Economies Through the Digitization of Small and Medium Enterprises

Published

3 years ago

February 16, 2023

Gerald Maithya

Startups Lead Microsoft Africa Transformation Office

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are a crucial part of contributing to Africa’s inclusive socio-economic growth. These businesses anchor the economies of countries and are contributing to inclusive socio-economic growth. In emerging economies, SMEs account for 40% of GDP, and generate at least 90% of new jobs.

This is even more pronounced in Africa, where more than 60% of Africa’s population is under the age of 25. SMEs account for about 80% of jobs in Africa, while the African Union Development Agency notes that up to 90% of the population in African countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya are employed within SMEs.

In Nigeria, SMEs account for 96% of businesses, and 84% of employment in the country, and contribute 48% of the country’s GDP, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. Of these SME’s, 55% are in wholesale or retail business.

SMEs employ people, supply products and services and act as an important link in the manufacturing value chain, generating economic activity along the way. The way that many manufactured products reach consumers is through SMEs, usually through a network of small independent retail stores such as dukas and kiosks in Kenya, ojas in Nigeria, hanouts in Morocco or spaza shops in South Africa. In doing so, SMEs are the cornerstone of most economies. By enabling SMEs to grow and compete in the value chain, countries’ economies can be strengthened.

SMEs face many obstacles on the path to success

Despite the important role SMEs play in African economies, there are several challenges standing in the way of their survival and success. In fact, research indicates that up to 80% of African SMEs fail within the first five years, despite having the highest entrepreneurship rate in the world. Infrastructure and connectivity, access to business enablement tools, access to finance and digital skills are all potential stumbling blocks for SMEs.

The biggest obstacle most SMEs face is accessing finance and affordable lending. These businesses frequently lack suitable information such as a credit history, financial statements and other prerequisite data points, while the traditional credit-scoring models that many financial institutions use prejudice SMEs. Without access to working capital, SMEs are unable to invest in their business and grow. There is a need to enable tools that SMEs can utilise to collect and manage transactional data that can be used to provide valuable business insights to guide decision-making for the SME, and that can be leveraged to create financial reports.

Digitising SMEs has benefits that support economic growth

Digitisation can help businesses build a financial and transactional history that helps them access loans. This information and well-organised data can enable access and diversification of financing for SMEs in Africa. This financing in turn helps them grow their business, employ more people and contribute to their country’s economy.

Microsoft engages with international organisations such as the IFC, and local financial services institutions, to create innovative financing mechanisms for SMEs on the African continent that enable them to build a credit record and differentiated data sets that tell the story of the business rather than a pure money-in-money-out overview. This allows for a wider range of borrowing opportunities, enabling SMEs to become part of the integrated value chain and participate in the formal economy.

Business tools are an important part of the journey

To successfully complete their digitisation journey, these small and medium businesses also need connectivity and devices that are suitable for business development. Challenges around connectivity and device affordability are certainly not new to Africa. Though the issue of internet access varies considerably depending on the country in question, high cost of data is still a major hurdle for many nations across the continent. Research from the Alliance for Affordable Internet shows that just 14 out of 48 countries in Africa have access to affordable internet, with affordability defined as 1GB of mobile prepaid broadband costing two percent or less of the average monthly income.

Microsoft is working to address Africa’s connectivity issues through the Airband Initiative, which provides investment into infrastructure that drives connectivity. The initiative partners with African startups that are overcoming barriers to affordable internet access in unconnected communities by using TV white space (TVWS) and other innovative last-mile access technologies. Accelerated internet adoption is the precursor to digital enablement. Recently, Microsoft announced that it is expanding the Airband Initiative through new partnerships with local and global providers to bring internet access to 100 million Africans by the end of 2025, and working with partner Viasat, Microsoft is extending satellite connectivity to 5 million Africans.

Another sticking point is access to business hardware. The vast majority of SME owners and entrepreneurs in Africa rely on smartphones to run their businesses. However, being able to access devices such as laptops with preloaded software could help business owners to manage their business processes and reap the rewards of access to best-in-class Software as a Solution (SaaS) products more easily.

As a company, Microsoft has recognised that different SMEs have entirely different solution requirements. Microsoft differentiates itself by working with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and startups who build software solutions that can be used with Microsoft technologies. This allows businesses of all sizes to these solutions from the marketplace, with the benefit that when curating a business bundle, an SME can look at their specific needs and match to the software that’s in the Microsoft Marketplace.

The digitisation journey must include skills development

SME owners often have little access to business skills development opportunities. Through platforms such as the Africa Transformation Office’s SME Skilling package, Microsoft Learn, the Cloud Academy and LinkedIn Learning, SME owners can increase their business understanding to help their day-to-day business operations, build their business literacy and develop the technical understanding necessary to support their digitisation journey.

Digitisation can significantly enhance financial inclusion, most particularly for unserved and underserved enterprises such as SMEs. Creating an enabling environment for these important economically active businesses that helps them thrive and participate actively in the continent’s economies is essential for sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

Business

Facebook, Instagram Global Outage: Over 130,000 Reports as Millions Logged Out

Published

7 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Trends Admin

Facebook, Instagram Global Outage: Over 130,000 Reports as Millions Logged Out

NEW YORK/LONDON/SINGAPORE – Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook and Instagram experienced a widespread outage on Friday, June 12, 2026, leaving millions of users across the world unable to access their accounts as the disruption affected the entire ecosystem of Meta-owned services.

The disruption affected Facebook’s main website, mobile application and Messenger service, with many users reporting that they were automatically logged out of their accounts. The trouble appeared to begin on WhatsApp before spreading across Meta’s platforms. Users attempting to access Facebook received error messages including “an unexpected error occurred,” “sorry, something went wrong,” and “Query Error.”

Visitors to Facebook’s website were shown a notice stating that the company was working to resolve the issue. The disruption began at approximately 10:00 AM Eastern Time (2:00 PM GMT) , with users reporting being unable to load feeds or access core features on affected platforms.

According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, the scale of the disruption was substantial. Facebook recorded over 130,000 user reports at its peak, while Instagram logged approximately 9,500 complaints. Reuters reported more than 62,000 complaints for Facebook and over 8,000 for Instagram during the peak of the disruption.

Reports of the outage quickly flooded social media platform X, formerly Twitter, as users turned to the site to confirm whether others were experiencing similar problems. While Facebook and Instagram were the most affected services, WhatsApp and Messenger also experienced significant disruptions.

The outage appeared to be global, with complaints emerging from multiple countries within a short period. The disruption affected users across the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, Philippines, India, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the United Arab Emirates. In Singapore, reports about Facebook spiked on Downdetector at approximately 1:00 PM GMT.

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According to outage-tracking website StatusGator, users in the Philippines, India, Australia, Canada, and the United States also reported issues with Meta’s various applications. In Vietnam, users began reporting problems at approximately 8:40 PM local time, and the issue was reported resolved by approximately 9:20 PM local time.

Meta communications director Andy Stone confirmed the company was aware of the issue. “We’re aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services. We’re working on it,” Stone wrote in a post on X.

The company’s internal status page logged “high disruptions” across its business products, including Facebook Ads Manager, the Messenger Platform, the Messenger API for Instagram, and the WhatsApp Business Platform. Advertisers reported being unable to create or edit ads during the disruption, and Meta apologized “for any inconvenience.”

Notably, while Facebook and Messenger experienced issues, some users reported that Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp remained operational for certain regions or devices. However, many users still reported issues accessing these services depending on their location and device type.

The disruption was not limited to mobile applications. Users attempting to access Facebook and Instagram through web browsers also encountered error messages and were unable to load content normally. Some users reported that Facebook’s mobile app worked while the desktop site displayed errors, highlighting the uneven nature of the disruption.

Meta’s own status page, which is responsible for providing real-time information about platform responsiveness, failed to provide valuable data during the incident. Throughout the disruption period, the page displayed all services as having “no errors detected,” potentially leading users to believe the problem was on their end rather than the platform.

Downdetector’s own website experienced technical difficulties around the same time as the outage, though it was not immediately clear whether the two events were connected. Before becoming unavailable, the platform had logged tens of thousands of error reports within minutes.

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The disruption adds to a series of intermittent outages affecting Meta’s family of apps in recent years. In one major outage in March 2026, Facebook and Instagram users across several countries reported being unable to load feeds or access accounts for several hours. A separate disruption earlier that month also affected thousands of users globally.

Prior to 2026, Meta experienced major outages in March 2024, when the entire ecosystem including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads was down for over two hours, with Downdetector recording over 550,000 outage reports. Another similar incident occurred in December 2024, disrupting communication for millions of accounts worldwide.

Meta representatives have stated in both previous instances that the root cause stemmed from internal technical issues, emphasizing that these incidents were independent of each other and completely unrelated to external cyberattacks.

By midday Eastern Time (approximately two hours after the outage began), service was recovering unevenly, region by region. Meta marked some services, such as ad delivery, as resolved, while others remained “in the process of being restored.”

On the consumer side, Facebook was loading closer to normal and Downdetector reports were falling, though some users still saw empty Stories bars, stale feeds, or “Try Again” errors. In Vietnam, the issue was reported resolved by approximately 9:20 PM local time.

The scale of the disruption underscored the central role Meta’s platforms play in global communication and commerce. Even a few hours of downtime ripples through messaging services, business operations, and login authentication systems far beyond the social media feed.

Meta has not yet released an official statement regarding the specific cause of this latest outage as of the time of finalizing this report. The company has not provided an estimated timeline for when all services will be fully restored, though restoration efforts continue to proceed.

This is a developing story. Updates will follow as Meta provides official explanation of the cause and confirms full restoration of all services.

Facebook, Instagram Global Outage: Over 130,000 Reports as Millions Logged Out

Business

Elon Musk Becomes World’s First Trillionaire After SpaceX IPO Valuation Surge

Published

8 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Trends Admin

Elon Musk Becomes World’s First Trillionaire After SpaceX IPO Valuation Surge

Elon Musk has officially entered uncharted financial territory after becoming the first individual in history to reach a $1 trillion net worth, following the blockbuster initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX, which was priced at $135 per share.

The milestone marks a dramatic reshaping of global wealth rankings, driven primarily by the surge in valuation of SpaceX, the aerospace and space exploration company at the center of Musk’s financial empire.

The SpaceX IPO has been described as one of the most significant private-to-public transitions in modern financial history. With shares debuting at $135, investor demand pushed the company’s valuation to unprecedented levels, instantly elevating Musk’s paper wealth. Before the IPO, Musk’s net worth was estimated at approximately $813 billion, already positioning him far ahead of other global billionaires, including Google co-founder Larry Page, whose estimated wealth stood at about $288 billion. Following the listing, Musk’s total fortune is now estimated at just over $1.005 trillion, making him the world’s first confirmed trillionaire on paper.

According to the IPO structure, Musk holds approximately 4.8 billion shares in SpaceX, representing about 42% ownership, along with around 350 million stock options exercisable at a significantly lower strike price of $8.39 per share. At the IPO valuation, his SpaceX equity stake alone is worth roughly $648 billion, while stock options contribute an additional $44.3 billion. Combined with his holdings in Tesla and other investments, Musk’s total net worth crosses the symbolic $1 trillion threshold.

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Despite the historic milestone, financial analysts emphasize that Musk’s trillion-dollar status remains highly dependent on market conditions. Once trading begins on the Nasdaq Composite, fluctuations in SpaceX share price could significantly impact his net worth. A strong opening could push his fortune higher, while a decline could bring it back below the trillion-dollar mark. This volatility underscores a key characteristic of ultra-high-net-worth wealth: it is largely paper-based and market-sensitive, rather than liquid cash.

Musk’s achievement places his personal wealth in the same category as the gross domestic product of some of the world’s largest economies. Only a small number of countries globally—fewer than 20—have economies exceeding $1 trillion GDP, highlighting the scale of the milestone. The development has also intensified discussions around wealth inequality. Advocacy group Oxfam America has previously warned that extreme wealth concentration reflects widening economic disparities between the ultra-rich and the rest of the world.

While Musk remains the primary beneficiary of the IPO, the listing is also expected to generate substantial wealth for employees and early investors. Reports suggest that approximately 4,400 SpaceX employees could become millionaires depending on post-IPO market performance, marking one of the largest employee wealth creation events in the tech and aerospace sectors.

Musk’s rise to trillionaire status highlights the extraordinary growth of privately developed space technology and the increasing financial power of high-growth innovation companies. However, analysts caution that such milestones remain fluid, as billionaire rankings and net worth estimates can change rapidly based on market sentiment and stock performance.

Elon Musk Becomes World’s First Trillionaire After SpaceX IPO Valuation Surge

Auto

Toyota moves to ease vehicle ownership amid economic challenges

Published

16 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Trends Admin

Managing Director of Toyota Nigeria Limited, Mr. Kunle Ade-Ojo; Chairman of TNL, Chief Michael Ade.Ojo, and MD/CEO, AGL Motors Ltd, Alhaji AbdulAfeez Gabar Lado, at the presentation of the 2025 best customer award to AGL Motors in Lagos.

Toyota Nigeria unveils plans to ease vehicle ownership

As rising costs put car ownership beyond the reach of many Nigerians, Toyota Nigeria Limited says it is rolling out fresh measures to make buying and maintaining vehicles easier for customers.

Managing Director, Mr. Kunle Ade-Ojo, announced the plans at the company’s 2026 Awards and Customers’ Night in Lagos, where he reaffirmed Toyota’s commitment to expanding mobility solutions in the country.

A statement on Thursday quoted Ade-Ojo as saying Toyota Nigeria would continue to innovate and introduce strategies that would enable more Nigerians to own and maintain Toyota vehicles while enjoying quality after-sales support.

According to him, the company’s commitment goes beyond selling vehicles to ensuring customers enjoy a seamless ownership experience through a robust nationwide service network.

“We will continue to innovate, adapt and elevate our product offerings and service delivery. Our ambition remains clear: to sustain industry leadership while contributing meaningfully to Nigeria’s economic development as a responsible corporate citizen,” he said.

He added that the company’s future plans are aligned with Toyota’s global vision of enriching lives through mobility, with a strong focus on innovation, sustainability and value creation.

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Ade-Ojo noted that Toyota Nigeria’s success over the years had been driven by the loyalty of customers, support from dealers, suppliers, employees, financial institutions and strategic partners, as well as the guidance of the company’s board led by its founder and chairman, Chief Michael Ade-Ojo.

The highlight of the event was the presentation of the Evergreen Customer of the Year Award to Zenith Bank Plc, which retained the title as Toyota Nigeria’s highest-volume customer for 2025. In recognition of the achievement, Chief Michael Ade-Ojo presented the bank with the keys to a brand-new Toyota Starlet Cross.

AGL Motors emerged overall winner in the Customer of the Year category, while the Nigerian Army and Zenith Bank were named first and second runners-up respectively. The winners received office equipment valued at several millions of naira.

Toyota Nigeria also honoured excellence in automotive journalism. Theodore Opara of Vanguard was named Journalist of the Year, while Mike Ochonma of Transport World and Rasheed Bisiriyu of Newstrends received awards for their contributions to automotive reporting, mobility advocacy and industry analysis.

Speaking at the event, several dealers and business partners commended Toyota Nigeria’s investments in dealer development, technical training and workshop upgrades, describing the initiatives as critical to sustaining high service standards and customer satisfaction across the country.

Toyota Nigeria unveils plans to ease vehicle ownership