MTN Link Forum – Platform for entrepreneurship education

In a bid to impart business strategies that will aid efficiency in business operations, both at the small and medium levels of the economy,  Nigeria’s leading telecommunication network, MTN, over the last three months, through its four-city entrepreneurship platform, MTN Link Forum, brought leading entrepreneurs with young  Nigerian business professionals and budding entrepreneurs so the former may share with the latter their success secrets and principles that have helped them survive Nigeria’s business inclement business environment.

Ogechi Agudah, a chartered broker and special assistant to the minister of industry, trade and investment while speaking at the Enugu leg of the programme, identified concept, connection, courage and capital as the basic requirements a person needs to become a successful entrepreneur.

Elaborating further on these ‘4Cs’, he said; “concept is the idea that defines the business, an entrepreneur must develop the right connection, while courage will keep you going when everything seems not to be working and money will naturally come if the first 3Cs are in place.”

Agudah, whose dream is to see Nigerian entrepreneurs become global giants, reiterated the need for young entrepreneurs to move beyond small scale enterprises and build businesses that can outlive them. According to him, “if entrepreneurs must build a ‘100-year-old business’, s/he must employ the right people, particularly, people that are smarter than them and position their businesses in meeting both the present and future needs of customer.”

One of the challenges confronting businesses in Nigeria is lack of continuity. The dream, vision and effort of business owners die with them because there is no inter-generational transfer of business and ideas that can generate jobs for the growing and over-stretched labour market.

According to Agudah, “in Nigeria we don’t see a business passing from one generation to another, our concern should be how to move Nigeria’s small and medium scale businesses (SMEs) to growing business that can compete globally. “Your businesses must not remain small forever,” he said.

Another business icon Uzora Okafor, managing director, Power Mass Company Limited, in a short but electrifying speech said: “to succeed, an entrepreneur must have capacity to develop an idea, a good plan to execute the idea and should not be afraid of taking risk. He must also be customer-focused, have a good succession plan, recruit like minds and must never hire those s/he cannot fire.”

Speaking at the Port Harcourt leg of the MTN Link Forum, Victor Itayo, the CEO of Quantum Business School, Port Harcourt, identified lack of basic infrastructure, lack of capital and information as the major hindrances to SME development in Nigeria.

Itayo observed: “With the right structures in place, SMEs in Nigeria can contribute meaningfully to the country’s GDP just like in China and India, where their SMEs contribute about 40 to 50 percent to their GDP.”

He noted that there is need to put in place the right structures, ranging from constant power supply to adequate financing through loans and grants and a more favourable business environment for SMEs to thrive in Nigeria. “This would make the sector contribute meaningfully to the national’s GDP as it is the case in China and India,” he said.

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. After being equipped with key business secrets from the business icons at the event, participants took to the dance floor to do justice to popular songs from Immaculate, a Project Fame past runner-up. Thereafter, varieties of gifts were given to participants, particularly those who recorded the highest number of interactions during the forum.

Participants at the activations described MTN Link Forum as a platform that give them an opportunity to achieve their business goals while offering them a unique privilege to network their way to the top. MTN has set the ball rolling for Nigeria’s entrepreneurial development; one can only hope that the journey towards of growing small and medium scale enterprises, to globally competitive ones has just begun.