To enhance growth: SMEs Promotion Agency drills over 40 experts on business coaching.

This is the focus of a five-day workshop launched in Yaounde on Monday May 8. The opening was presided at by SMEPA General Manager, Jean Marie Louis Badga. SMEPA officials are using the workshop as a means to accompany SMEs financially, schooling the various business coaches on business development services. 

Speaking to reporters after the opening of the workshop, SMEPA General Manager, Jean Marie Louis Badga, said the workshop is a window to evaluate the ground covered by the institution in attaining its goal of pushing for the growth of Cameroonian SMEs through various non-financial support systems. 

He described business coaching as the latest innovation of the SMEs Promotion Agency, aimed at having a more efficient follow up of enterprises by partners. 

“This workshop is a gathering for reflection. For a few years now, we have been accompanying SMEs through non-financial services. We have introduced a new field which is coaching,” Badga said, adding that the “coaching will enable a close follow up of the SMEs” within the body’s mission of “positively impacting the enterprises by contributing to its development”. 

Adopting result-oriented business coaching guideline 

SMEPA boss also announced that the workshop will enable the agency come out with a validated guideline for business coaching which will guide the various experts in the domain on how to be more universally engaged in accompanying enterprises. 

The guideline, according to Badga, will give a global view on the various roles and regulations to be followed by experts. To him, this is intended to give room for proper follow-up in times of need, unlike the current and less efficient system based on over specialisation. 

“One of the main objectives of this workshop is to work with all the business development services on the field and to make sure that we have a guide of business coaching,” SMEPA boss said.

“We want these business coaches to be near so that they can evaluate the intervention of the different advisors. They can help the companies when they have the need to because they have to be there to follow the evolution and the development of the structures,” he detailed. 

The attainment of such objectives, the General Manager reiterated, will help position SMEPA as the reference structure in the domain of assisting SMEs. 

“We want SMEPA to attain its vision of becoming a reference institution in accompanying SMEs. This can only be done by having a business development service that is complete and inclusive championed by the Small and Medium-size Promotion Agency. The institution wants to be at the centre of the Cameroonian economy,” Badga emphasised.

Participants say initiative hugely beneficial for SMEs 

The ongoing workshop is bringing together over 40 participants from all the 10 regions in the country. Participants at the Yaounde workshop have described the initiative from SMEPA as a brilliants move. 

According to one of the participants from the Littoral Region, Poutong Tchassem Rodrigue, the workshop will bring in enormous change in the Cameroonian business space particularly in the domain of SMEs. 

“Usually, as a consultant, we have to follow up enterprises only in our domain of specialisation or expertise. An enterprise has many functions and consultants usually focus on each function according to their knowledge but now with this workshop, we are supposed to have a general view of the enterprise,” Poutong said, adding that the training will help them “manage all interactions between functions and achieve good development for the enterprises”.