The Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Movement (MSME) aims to facilitate access to finance for local SMEs. This is the major challenge for small and micro businesses.

Currently in the pilot phase, the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Movement project should be scaled up to support SMEs, whose main challenges are access to finance, market access, competitiveness and human capital according to President Patricia Zoundi. According to him, the MSME has launched the SME finance window with the support of former bankers, who assist these small and medium-sized enterprises “from start to finish” as consultants. To access finance, she says, “we do capacity-building training with the support of institutions like IFC (International Finance Corporation) and the World Bank for everything related to leasing.” In this program, which started six months ago, “first cohort of fifteen SMEs.” This group of SMEs has also already benefited from being put in contact with consultants who work with SMEs on file preparation and from training on financial literacy.

This project was created 43 years ago and aims to make the organization's members highly competitive with a view to accessing local markets and exteriors. According to Patricia Zoundi, “It's a pilot, we'll learn the lessons and see how we scale it up”, the umbrella brings together some 400 member SMEs and has also launched a window to strengthen human capital.