Marrakech — Industry leaders gathered at the GITEX Africa 2025 Future of Finance Stage to discuss how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are molding Africa’s employment landscape.
The panel took place on the final day of GITEX Africa 2025 in Marrakech.
SMEs’ role in developing a future-ready workforce is more crucial than ever, as these contribute 40% of total employment across the African continent.
Khouloud Abejja, Director of Digital Transformation at the Agency of Digital Development (ADD), elaborated on the unique advantages SMEs bring to workforce development.
“SMEs are smaller, so often they provide more effective and diverse opportunities to the workforce,” she said, noting that “this allows employees to gain hands-on experience across different digital tools, platforms, and processes.”
Abejja pointed out that SMEs’ agility gives them an edge over larger corporations as “they allow staff to adopt digital tools quickly and can build partnerships with schools to offer trainees, internships, and mentorships.”
Meanwhile, these small businesses face significant challenges, she argued, especially when hiring specialized talents. “SMEs tend to have limited financial resources, so they have constraints to invest in or hire specialized talents,” Abejja explained.
“They also can face generational expectations, differences between young people and older people within the company, and all that is related to upskilling requires really tight investment,” she added.
Kami Dar, Founder and CEO of Uniti Networks, focused on how digital inclusion remains a major obstacle. “The amount of digital exclusion in Africa has not moved 1% since 2020. It’s absolutely shocking,” he revealed.
Dar stressed that internet access only isn’t enough, raising this the importance of participation. “How are individuals participating in the environment?”
For SMEs to thrive, Dar believes that for a strong and impactful inclusion of workforce in an ever growing digitized world, the focus should be on practical solutions.
“I think the keyword is productivity. With all kinds of investments, you make the investment today and you reap the return tomorrow,” he noted, asking “What happens in between those two points in time?”
Both speakers agreed that developing digital skills is essential for Africa’s workforce.
“In our world, soft skills are crucial because it allows the person to have good knowledge of their skills and to communicate and respond to the needs of different partners, bosses, colleagues…those are key aspects for young people in today’s job market,” Abejja concluded.
