Self-starters helped onto a better track

Many opportunities are lining up to assist would-be entrepreneurs

WE are fortunate to be living at a time when the entrepreneurial ecosystem in South Africa is gaining energy and momentum. Each day, more organisations sign on to provide funding and acceleration programmes.

However, even though the number of organisations available to assist is increasing, there remains an information gap because those who have access to and knowledge about the ecosystem are not necessarily the ones who need it the most.

Those who need it the most have long self-selected themselves out of the entrepreneurial journey and remain unaware of the wealth of resources out there.

To address this, we need to increase the level of informationsharing about resources available to support entrepreneurs. The information needs to be accessible to the person on the street who has great potential but needs support in unleashing it.

This is why I am excited that Global Entrepreneurship Week will be held in Johannesburg and Cape Town this week. This year, South Africa is ramping up its participation in the initiative, one that is observed in 160 countries during the same week.

In fact, South Africa has been chosen to host Africa’s first Global Entrepreneurship Congress in March next year — the world’s largest gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and policymakers.

But as much as such gatherings are needed, aspirant entrepreneurs also need to take responsibility for seeking information. It is disheartening to see them give up because of a lack of funding and opportunities, even though they have not actively reached out to the hundreds of organisations that exist to assist them.

Unfortunately, many aspirant entrepreneurs still lack the resilience needed to keep trying, mainly because we do not foster our entrepreneurs from an early stage.

I am encouraged when I come across organisations that are addressing this gap. One example is the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, which offers high school and university scholarships for entrepreneurs — in contrast to the many organisations that focus on funding people interested in being employed by the funder after graduation.

Most funders groom people for jobs, whereas the foundation aims to groom entrepreneurs. It also provides them with post-graduation training and, more recently, with access to funding partner E2.

This results in a pool of entrepreneurs who have developed the resilience needed to succeed.

The entrepreneur success stories who are alumni of the foundation include rocket-fuel innovator Siya Xuza, DryBath inventor Ludwick Marishane and Yoco co-founder Bradley Wattrus.

What a model like this does well is to start grooming entrepreneurs early on, challenging the stereotype that high school and tertiary education should be reserved for those aspiring to have a job. In fact, education can help you become a great entrepreneur. You do not have to be a university dropout to qualify as an entrepreneur.

Anthony Farr, CEO of the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, says it chose to focus on entrepreneurs because entrepreneurial talent, like many talents, has a higher chance of exploding later on if it is identified early. “As a nation, we are very good at identifying and developing talents related to sport, music and intelligence in our youth. The same needs to be true for entrepreneurial talent, which, when developed, can have a far greater impact on society and address the job-creation challenge,” says Farr.

Farr has noticed more corporations taking an active role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem because they are finally realising that entrepreneurs are a means to drive innovation and growth opportunities. The local banking sector is a good example of this — a number of banks have developed their own entrepreneurship competitions and accelerator programmes.

We need to make the most of the current energy and momentum. This will enable us to develop the capacity to increase our entrepreneurial activity to that of the rest of Africa and the world.

Find Global Entrepreneurship Week details at imbizojunction.co.za.

Sikhakhane is an international speaker and an executive at Circle Food Group, with a business honours degree from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Stanford University