How Botswana creates new entrepreneurs
AS A RETAILER in the fast-moving consumer goods space in sub-Saharan Africa, I’ve keenly observed the substantial overlap between entrepreneurship and retail; many new businesses started in this part of the world are retail stores.
This interest in retail entrepreneurship has led me to an even keener interest in entrepreneurship in general.
So I recently I had a look at the 2015/16 Global Report from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the world’s foremost study on entrepreneurship.
I’ve lived/worked both in Botswana and South Africa, so I was especially interested in how these two countries fared in the report.
To my surprise, the two countries, though geographically adjacent to each other, were practically poles apart in the report, with South Africa lagging behind Botswana on several key indicators/levers of entrepreneurship.
Lacklustre
The perceived lack of opportunities to start a business could be addressed with skills in resourceful thinking and creativity.
South Africa’s lacklustre performance in entrepreneurship affects economic development and job creation in the country. Some particularly interesting levers that can be used to improve this performance are school-level entrepreneurship education and individuals’ beliefs towards entrepreneurship in South Africa. Addressing these factors could have not only economic but social benefits too. Supplementary education programmes that latch on to the existing basic education infrastructure could help achieve such entrepreneurial improvement.
So what were Botswana’s versus South Africa’s scores on the key entrepreneurship indicators? For entrepreneurship education at the school level, Botswana ranked 8th (and No 1 in Africa) amongst the 62 countries surveyed, whereas South Africa ranked 29th.
On individuals’ perception about good opportunities to start a business where they live, Botswana ranked at 7– South Africa at 35. What’s especially alarming here is that South Africa’s economy is at least 20 times larger than Botswana’s. As for individuals’ self-perception about their own capabilities/skills to start a business, Botswana ranked 4th; South Africa ranked 38th.
A fear of failure prevented 30 percent of South Africans aged 18 to 64 from starting a business versus 19 percent of respondents in Botswana. It’s not surprising therefore, that respondents in Botswana were almost 6 times more intent on starting a business in the next 3 years, than those in South Africa.
What’s to be done about these gaps? Structural changes in the macroeconomy will take a lot of time. Furthermore, there’s more at play here than macroeconomics – such as issues of confidence and self-esteem at a national level. A solution may lie in the implementation of entrepreneurship supplementary education programmes (eg after school) that latch on to South Africa’s existing basic education infrastructure.
While helping improve core conventional skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, such programmes would also need to augment students’ 21st century skills.
The perceived lack of opportunities to start a business could be addressed with skills in resourceful thinking and creativity; specific tools could include reframing problems and applying solutions/patterns from one industry to another.
Individuals’ low perception of their own capabilities would be addressed by giving them tools in problem solving and critical thinking. These would include the ability to break down problems and realise their finite (as opposed to perceived insurmountable) nature; and prioritising tasks and planning resources. Critical thinking skills would allow potential entrepreneurs to introspect on their own strengths and weaknesses; and vet the accuracy of information to recognise truth/opportunities amidst the noise of data and biases. Fear of failure could be mitigated via skills in grit and managing one’s emotions in the face of challenges.
These supplementary 21st century skills are by no means a panacea, but could be a valuable step towards closing South Africa’s entrepreneurial gaps. Beyond just entrepreneurship and macroeconomics, they could help create a necessary positive shift, however small, in individual South Africans’ beliefs about their country and themselves.