AdminBookings Africa, a digital work platform in the continent, has announced its partnership with the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), MTN, and the University of Lagos (UNILAG), to provide digital literacy training under the Lagos Covid-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (CARES) to businesses that were affected by income-loss and COVID 19 pandemic.
The Lagos CARES is the State’s intervention programme that seeks to reduce the impact of COVID-19 pandemic especially on small businesses, through providing relief to cushion the effect of income-loss and COVID-19 on commercial activities.
According to a statement from the Pan African digital platform where clients and professionals connect, the programme will be implemented between 2021 and 2023 and will provide economic relief and recovery support to identified vulnerable people, specifically looking at three key result areas, which include increasing cash transfers and livelihood support to vulnerable households; increasing food security and the safe functioning of food supply chains for low-income households; and facilitating the recovery of micro and small enterprises (MSMEs).
Bookings Africa identified four barriers which prohibit the informal economy from participating in the African Digital Economy, which include: access to smartphones, data, digital literacy, and access to finance. To solve these issues, Bookings Africa has partnered with Lagos CARES through the Smart POS Pilot Programme, which will equip 500 informal Lagos based businesses with an Android phone that doubles as a POS machine, free basic digital literacy training, exclusively created by Bookings Africa and approved by the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA). Other partners of the project, like MTN, would provide sponsored data to these devices. Through this partnership, the earning capacity of each Smart POS user is projected to increase by two times with the use of the embedded Bookings Africa and agency banking applications.
Managing Director, Bookings Africa, Fade Ogunro said “Our aim, which is to unlock the earning potential of entrepreneurial Africans and commercialize their latent skillset across the African talent pool, excites us tremendously. The collaboration with LSETF, MTN, and UNILAG ESDC will have an impact on the next stage of our journey.”
The pilot phase of this case study is for three months, during which the impact will be studied and reviewed by UNILAG’s Entrepreneurship and Skills Development Centre (ESDC). The Bookings Africa and LSETF projects are exclusive to Lagos State and the phones will be distributed across five Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Lagos.
The beneficiaries selected by LSETF must be semi – literate, have evidence of a consistent source of income, and be faced with the challenges of participating in the African Digital Economy.
As part of its partnership with UNILAG’s ESDC, the institution will gather quantitative and qualitative data from beneficiaries over the next three months. The findings will be published as a whitepaper case study and distributed to all stakeholders and global organisations such as the World Bank. Research shows that the most underserved members of the informal economy are women and people living with disabilities, and as such, the devices will be distributed to 70 per cent women and 5 per cent of people living with disabilities. This partnership aims to increase digital adoption and access to finance for informal workers.
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