Supporting Kenya SMEs through access to COVID-19 Business support information

SMEs are the backbone of the Kenyan economy employing over 30 percent of the working population, contribute 33 percent to GDP and constitute 98 percent of all businesses in Kenya. For instance, accounted for 83.6 percent of the 840600  new jobs created in the year 2018.

Despite SMEs prolific contribution to Kenya’s socio-economic development; they continue to perform below capacity riddled with high mortality rate of 75 percent within 3 years of inception underpinned on challenges such as access to finance, access to markets, access to information, lack of management skills, access to technology and unsupportive policies among others.

Kenyan SMEs have borne the full brunt of the spill over effects of COVID-19 to business operations with many having taken drastic measures in order to survive such as laying off personnel, vacating premises, selling off personal and business assets and in many cases many have closed business.

The Kenyan government as well as other stakeholders supporting SMEs have endeavored to offer assistance to SMEs in various forms to enable them manage and recover from the negative effects of COVID-19 . For instance, the Kenya government announced an economic Stimulus Programme that offered tax breaks, seed funded a credit guarantee scheme, directed payment of pending bills to SMEs among others.

These SME intervention information are currently domiciled in different locations based on the institution generating it which makes it difficult to access by SMEs cognizant that over 90 percent are micro businesses hence are fully immersed in their business and 79 percent are informal hence major channel for information is majorly through their associations. Further these intervention information are in various websites, published on print media as well as featured on mass media at specific times hence SME owners may miss out on the information

The GIZ Programme for Promotion of Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship in Kenya, in collaboration with Viffa Consult, has developed a portal dubbed SME BIZ HUB that espouses to address this challenge through aggregating SME related information and interventions by all stakeholders in regards to COVID-19 to enable SMEs and entrepreneurs have timely access to information hence make informed decisions. Information in the portal is clustered based on challenges faced by SMEs of market, finance, training/capacity building, research as well as general information captured under the news and event sections. This portal can be accessed via the link https://smebizhub.viffaconsult.co.ke/

Current Partners

• Kenya National Federation Of Jua Kali Association
• Association of Start-up and SME Enablers of Kenya (ASSEK)
• KCA University
• Social Enterprise Society of Kenya
• SME Founder Association
• Association of Countywide Innovation Hubs
• Egerton University