Is every investee at Africa Eats and Africa Trees an SME? Are they all small. Are any big enough to be medium? Did the biggest grow beyond SME status last year? Where are the edges to these categories?
There is no global authority to answer those questions, but the EU does have a definition that they’ve not only published, but have updated at least once. The boundaries between “micro“, small, and medium are a mix of employee headcount with either revenues or balance sheet.
With this definition, I can say my work focuses on finding, training, and investing in micro enterprises, helping them grow to be small SMEs over just a few years, then Medium SMEs two or three years later. Or more succinctly, I focus on using investment capital and support to grow micro enterprise to medium enterprises quickly. See seven examples on the Africa Eats blog.
