Pesewa Global Company Limited, an African markets-focused incubator has announced plans to invest GHC10 million worth of human, technological and capital resources over a one year period to put 100,000 small and informal businesses online.

The company it will do this using its premier mobile based apps – Pesewa CoINS and Pesewa Link.

“Pesewa CoINS is a business locator app offering location availability services, mobile marketing, marketplaces and business services to enterprises in both the formal and informal sectors, while Pesewa Link’s is designed as super mobile app offering more than 40 resources in your pocket,” it said.

Chief Executive Officer of Pesewa CoINS, Dr. Prince Abbey said the company intends connect businesses from the table-top vegetable sellers to masons and taxi drivers to be able to open their businesses to the world and to increase foot traffic and competitiveness.

He said the platform will also enable these businesses to access added services such as credits, direct debit, QR codes and delivery services.

Pesewa Global currently employs more than a 100 developers who register informal sector businesses on to their apps’ services and help manage these businesses online.

The informal sector in Ghana is known to account for 80% of the employed population. The informal economy in Africa also makes up for more than 60% of the gross domestic product of most sub-Saharan African countries and 90% of all its newly created jobs, according to International Labour Organization (ILO).

However, governments, international organizations, multinationals, banks and major global technology companies have so far been unable to harness the benefits from Africa’s informal economy. In fact, the race to ‘formalize’ these informal enterprises has led to further marginalization and unproductive technological solutions for these indigenous entrepreneurs.

Pesewa Global is hopeful that with this empowering initiative, Africa’s ‘small shops’ can wake up and transform the continent’s economic fortunes.