Women inspired to think big
‘Take your skills to a higher level’
Business owners who have years of experience in successfully running their local operations should start thinking about exporting their products with an aim to grow and compete globally.
This was expressed by Lebogang Letsoalo, the chief executive of Sincpoint, when she was delivering her presentation during the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller’s Women’s Month breakfast seminar.
Dubbed the Exclusive Transport, Manufacturing and Construction SMME Market Linkages Breakfast, the seminar held at the propeller’s head office in Johannesburg aimed to create networking opportunities for the attending female entrepreneurs while also informing them about how to become better businesspeople.
Letsoalo said Africa had an estimated population size of 1.1-billion people but the continent continued to be the least competitive in the world.
“From a global and African perspective, South Africans are competing … but South Africa is ranked 49 out of the 140 competitive countries evaluated,” she said.
She asked the entrepreneurs how many of them have mentors. Only four out of 90 raised their hands.
“This means that whatever you are doing in your business, you must start thinking that you are competing, building the country and its economy and you must capacitate yourself to be able to do that,” said Letsoalo.
She said it was important for business people to partner with stakeholders who would be able to take their entrepreneurship skills to a higher level.
“It is all about skills and building your capacity to help you get access to funding and markets, so that you may be able to operate in the global space and be able to export your products,” she said.
Delivering the keynote address, GEP acting chief executive Leah Manenzhe said the purpose of the seminar was to create networking opportunities among the just less than 90 entrepreneurs who had attended the event while also developing linkages between them and corporates.
She said the seminar came when GEP was assisting small, micro and medium enterprises to resolve challenges they generally faced which, for instance, included access to finance, markets, infrastructure and complying with regulation.
Manenzhe said the propeller would also prioritise assisting the entrepreneurs to take advantage of procurement opportunities, especially when considering that the public sector budget stood at R1.5-trillion while the private sector’s was R2.5-trillion.
Manenzhe said this showed the importance of SMMEs prioritising creating meaningful linkages with corporates.
“There is a lot of money in the private sector and one of the things we expect you to learn is how to go to corporates and source funding.”
Manenzhe also stressed the importance of having entrepreneurs start up-skilling themselves in offering various products and services in established sectors like transport and construction.
“Because we are trying to make sure that money can stay longer in our hands, it becomes
‘‘ There is a lot of money in the private sector
important that we start training and getting people into those sectors where you won’t just become a service provider in construction or you are just a project manager. You have to be in the manufacturing (of construction material) because that is where sustainability is.”