‘Open Source Solutions will Promote SMEs Devt’
The Country representative for Daydah Concepts, Mr. Adebayo Adeniyi, has advocated the the adoption of open source solutions for Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) in the face of increasing cost of software in Africa’s emerging economy
According to Adeniyi, who is a known software developer, arrangement has been concluded with Google, Mozila, Joomila, WordPress, Typo3, Magen,and Grav to brainstorm on content management system.
He said the high cost of software purchase remains a problem for many small and medium scale companies in Africa’s emerging economy and inexpensive as open source solution holds the key to more meaningful and far-reaching adoption of technology for them.
“Open source champions, including Google, Mozilla, Joomla, WordPress, Typo3, Magento, Grav, and many more are expected to grace the 2017 CMS Africa summit billed for Abuja, to further address the issue accessibility and affordability in software packages,” Adeniyi saud. According to him, an estimated 47 per cent of all websites on the internet today run on content management system and the rapid proliferation of e-commerce platforms in Nigeria is driven by the increased adoption of the platforms built for e-commerce. He said the summit is a premier open source technology event that brings together top ranking web developers, online retailer merchants, software engineers, web administrators, online marketers, online banking administrators, company owners, tech start-ups and incubation hubs. The theme of the event, according to him, is empowering businesses through open source with the focus being on encouraging African start-ups to use on open source as strategy for growth by SMEs.
He said open source is a catalyst for growth and innovation, ensuring that technology becomes an enable for better but less expensive business systems adopted by SMEs with attendant impact on the sector’s contributions to countries’ GDPs, productivity and employment.
“Previous editions was held in Uganda and Kenya and this is the first time the event is being brought to West Africa. The audience will learn through 30 global speakers, web and app development workshops, entrepreneurship tutorials on how to use Open Source technologies to sell or run enterprises in today’s world,” Adeniyi said, adding that open source software is currently being leveraged on by developers across the globe not just for blogging and publishing, but also for designing feature rich and secure internal process systems and enterprise resource tools.