ICT is fully recognised as an efficient tool for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. The National Computer Board (NCB) caters for equal access to ICT tools and Internet for women and promotes ICT literacy for women through trainings and workshops. It remains a fact that Mauritian SMEs are under equipped, which explained the low capital productivity index. The net result being that local SMEs have in the current circumstances exhausted their productivity growth possibilities from technology catchup. The NCB has launched the project Digital & Social Media Marketing, targeting these Women-led Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) especially women entrepreneurs to adapt to new methods of digital marketing. The programme consists of Awareness and Training sessions. This project is to guide Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to avail of new opportunities for Online presence and Digital & Social Media Marketing (DSMM) for boosting their business and expand their client base.

The main objectives are: to encourage women-led enterprises to adopt IT tools, social mead and digital marketing for expanding client and market base; initiate use of ICT and creation of social media business accounts; introduce basic digital marketing tools and skills; build up skills in user friendly graphic and video tools for posting; support adoption of e-commerce.

This is the first time that such a course is being provided to women in digital and social media marketing, where women entrepreneurs were given concrete take away action lines for online presence and marketing of their products. It is widely known that a large portion of small enterprises in Mauritius are women-led and they rely mainly on word of mouth or ad-hoc local exhibitions to market themselves.

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The work originally started off on a pilot basis in 2019 is being proposed and scaled up for the year 2020. This format of the programme will be similar to last year’s, namely : In collaboration with the National Women Entrepreneur Council (which has an active member force of 700 persons) suitable women entrepreneurs (from diverse sectors) will be identified (those with relevant product lines and also willing to adopt digital marketing tools)
Phase 1 : A presentation targeting these selected women entrepreneurs will be held to create awareness on Digital marketing and its benefits and a website will be created to give more information to women entrepreneurs who may not have enough time to follow the course. The website shall comprise of open source applications which SMEs can use in the running of the businesses. A Started pack giving a tutorial on digital marketing will also be disseminated to the selected women entrepreneurs.
The 2nd phase would consist of 1-1 sessions) training and hand-holding exercise for the women entrepreneurs. The participants will be accompanied as they perform exercises : on-line presence, creating and hosting of web sites, creating business social media page, search engine optimisation and driving traffic, updating and boosting pages and posts, multi-channel digital marketing, online adverts, storytelling, basics of simple free graphic and video tools and e-commerce options.
The third phase will consist of monitoring the progress of the women entrepreneurs and assist them in case of technical issues etc. Their pages will be regularly visited by NCB staff and 1-1 counseling will be provided to them until the participants are found to be at ease with their digital marketing.

The government of Mauritius is dedicated to development and empowerment of women-led MSMEs through the Digital & Social Media Marketing for Women-led Small Enterprises project. Along the lines of the national e-strategy, the project contributes to capacity building, dissemination of knowledge and skills, promoting e-business and e-employment that are outlined in the WSIS Action Plan.