A Monitoring and Control System for Micro and Small Enterprises: The Use of RUMSEG at the District Level in Ghana

Abstract

Rural folks in many districts in Ghana engage in various profit-making businesses which range from traditionally skilled-based manufacturing to retailing businesses. As a result, local government authorities together with stakeholders such as Rural Enterprise Project (REP) are interested in monitoring the development tendencies of these trade categories at their micro and small-scale levels. This paper comes out with Rural Micro and Small Scale Enterprises Growth (RUMSEG) tool that enables District Assemblies (DAs) to monitor and evaluate growth performances of Micro and Small-scale Enterprises (MSEs) at the district level, and serve as an aid to revenue mobilization. Beta testing and the agile iterative method were employed during modules testing and with a backend relational database to store client’s information. RUMSEG was tested at the Business Advisory Centres (BACs) of Asuogyaman and Atwima Nwabeagya District Assemblies in Ghana. Aided by the Enterprise Monitoring Diary (EMD), RUMSEG produced differences in clients’ growth performances in the context of turning actual cost of training by stakeholders into actual outputs of skills, abilities and competencies.

Keywords: growth performances, trade categories, stakeholders, RUMSEG, District Assemblies (DAs)