Building on the work I was doing for some small & medium sized enterprises (SMEs), in late 2024, I conducted a quick survey among SMEs in seven countries in Eastern and Southern Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Malawi). I randomly selected 100 SMEs (84 returned the questionnaire), to assess their corporate Knowledge, Attitude, Perceptions and Practices of communications and public relations. The selected SMEs are in a wide spectrum of business lines, including Manufacturing/processing/ agro-value addition, retail, fashion & apparel, pharmaceuticals. Others were in the services industry including (hospitality & tourism, health, education, micro-finance, construction, technology & innovation, logistics & transportation, consulting services).

Findings

The findings were stunning. Here is the summary:

·      75% rated communications & public relations highly (as “extremely important”) for the growth and profitability of their businesses; the remaining 25% rated it as “very important.”

·      In over 80% of the SMEs, the communications and PR function was performed by personnel without any formal training in communications & PR

·      These personnel who were responsible for communications & PR in these SMEs had no technical knowledge of what communications and PR are

·      The CEOs/MDs in most cases held this fort (amidst their other busy schedules), in others, this role was allocated to other managers - to juggle on top of their main roles (as Administration manager, Logistics Manager, etc). Trained communications & PR persons were presented in less than 10% of the respondents

·      60% said they didn’t have a communication/PR strategy/plan, unit or budget in their company

Conclusions/The Problem

The quick conclusions from this survey:

·      There is a high appreciation of the value of communications & PR among SMEs for their growth and bottom line. This is fertile ground for training.

·      Communications & PR was mainly done by personnel without any training in these areas. There is urgent need for a quick orientation/training to enable the fort-holders basic understanding to improve their level of effectiveness in delivery of communications & PR

·      There is an urgent need to provide a basic understanding and skills to communications & PR to SME managers as they grow and work towards hiring professional services in future

·      Given the similarity of presence and challenges of SMEs anywhere in the world, this could be true of any SME

The Solution – This Course

This course is designed as a solution to the challenge above, namely, to:

·      Provide a basic technical understanding of what communications & PR are, especially in the context of SMEs

·      Remove haphazardness with which SMEs currently do communications & PR, and its place bring planning and consistency

·      Train the fort-holders to effectively perform specific communications & PR functions such as media relations, online and social media, branding, public relations,

·      In the medium to long term, work towards supporting SMEs to put in place communications & PR strategies so that they can realize the full benefits of communications and PR for their growth and bottom-line 

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