Entrepreneurship

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Browsing Entrepreneurship by Subject "Minority business enterprises"

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    Capacitating entrepreneurs for a sustainable township economy : the Khulisanani/Godisanang and GrowYourBiz Initiatives
    (Gordon Institute of Business Science, 2020-01)
    The need for South Africa to develop its entrepreneurial capacity in order to create employment and a more dynamic, inclusive economy is well established in public and private sectors. However, success stories are hard to come by – especially when they focus on township entrepreneurs, a group that might be neglected by broader initiatives for being ‘too difficult’ or ‘not high impact enough’. The hope is that this report will ignite more rigorous debate about how to develop entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, even in environments that are resource-constrained and apparently opportunity-poor. This report details findings from research focused on a series of training and coaching and mentoring-based interventions in township economies across seven of South Africa’s nine provinces. These interventions and this research were conducted by the GIBS’s EDA through funds provided by the Walmart Foundation. The data was collected in a mixed methods design, involving qualitative and quantitative methods, before, during and after the intervention that was conducted during 2018 and 2019. The findings reveal that township entrepreneurs had developed their personal and business skills during the programme, resulting in improvements in their business operations and market position. For some, this was believed to have resulted in immediate and measurable growth in their businesses, while others believed that their new-found skills enabled them to build a strong foundation for future growth.
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    Gauteng township economy revitalisation strategy 2014-2019
    (Gauteng Province. Economic Development, 2020)
    ‘Township economy’ refers to enterprises and markets based in the townships. These enterprises are operated by township entrepreneurs to meet primarily the needs within and beyond the township and therefore can be understood a ‘township enterprises’ as distinguished from those operated by entrepreneurs outside the township. Township enterprises are diverse, with high rate of informality and provide a range of goods and services to meet the needs of township communities and beyond. Whilst township enterprises are mostly necessity micro in nature, characterised by poverty and low-incomes, there are many that were born out of opportunity. Both necessity and opportunity enterprises have produced successful black entrepreneurs who have ‘graduated’ from exclusively serving the township economy or trace their roots in the township economy. Meeting the social and economic needs of township communities, on the basis of co-operation and solidarity, has been one of the defining features of township enterprises. Government believes that township enterprises have a distinct and vital role to play in helping to create a vibrant socially inclusive, labour-absorbing and growing economy. Government’s vision is of vibrant and sustainable township enterprises as part of building an inclusive, labour absorbing and growing economy. Successful township enterprises can play an important role in helping to contribute to government’s programme of radical transformation, mordernisation and re-industrialisation of the Gauteng City Region economy by transforming townships into sites for productive activities, contributing to socially inclusive wealth creation and helping to foster sustainable livelihoods through job creation, social cohesion and active citizenship. Government is committed to ensure that township economy contributes at least 30% of the Gauteng GDP by 2030. The strategy sets out a programme of action for the next five years and beyond, illustrating how government together with key stakeholders will take a lead in revitalising the township enterprise activities. Key partners in the delivery of the strategy will include national government and its support agencies, provincial government, local government, the corporate sector, representative and support organisations for different types and forms of enterprises. Over the last 20 years, there has been a range of government support programmes aimed at micro, small and medium enterprises and co-operatives. These support measures are wide- ranging, combining both financial and non-financial support. In their variety, they aim to address a number of barriers common to all micro, small, and medium enterprises and cooperatives.
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    Promoting effective entry and participation of women entrepreneurs in the South African economy : pro-competitive principles for government and non-government stakeholders
    (Competition Commission South Africa, 2023-06)
    Competitive markets allow consumers to benefit from low prices, better quality of goods and services, innovation and more choice. For markets to be competitive they need to be accessible to all players that wish to participate in the markets. Barriers to entry and expansion are a significant hinderance to competitive markets. Barriers can arise from systematic issues, inequality, regulatory requirements, anticompetitive conduct and lack of access to key resources and markets to support firms seeking to enter markets and compete. These barriers ultimately result in reduced competition in markets, which in turn adversely impacts consumers. For women entrepreneurs, these barriers are further compounded by gender inequality. Women entrepreneurs face gender-based barriers that hinder their ability to enter and effectively compete in high income generating markets. Women entrepreneurs often find themselves operating businesses in low value generating sectors or informal sectors due to these gender-based barriers. Studies on entrepreneurship shows that women are starting businesses at a faster rate than men, especially in emerging economies. These studies show that women entrepreneurs play a critical role in job creation, income generation and revenue growth in many economies and that their entrepreneurial ventures also contribute to the reduction of the existing wealth inequalities between women and men. Although more women are taking the entrepreneurial plunge, research shows that there are existing gender-based barriers which restrict the ability of women entrepreneurs to start-up, enter markets and sustain successful businesses, especially in high value generating sectors of the economy. This is specially the case in South Africa, where women entrepreneurs are largely concentrated in areas of crafts, hawking, personal services and retail. The South African context is further complicated by issues relating to the intersectionality between gender and racial inequality, which compounds the barriers that are faced by black women entrepreneurs.6 These barriers affect the ability of women entrepreneurs to participate effectively and meaningfully in the economy and consequently have significant adverse effects for competitiveness of markets and inclusive economic growth.
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    Skills and youth entrepreneurship in Africa: analysis with evidence from Swaziland
    (African Development Bank, 2014-07) Brixiová, Zuzana; Ncube, Mthuli; Bicaba, Zorobabel
    The shortages of entrepreneurial skills have lowered search effectiveness of potential young entrepreneurs and the rate of youth start-ups. Our paper contributes to closing a gap in the entrepreneurship and development literature with a model of costly firm creation and skill differences between young and adult entrepreneurs. The model shows that for young entrepreneurs facing high cost of searching for business opportunities, support for training is more effective in stimulating productive start-ups than subsidies. Further, the case for interventions targeted at youth rises in societies with high cost of youth unemployment. We test the role of skills and training for productive youth entrepreneurship on data from a recent survey of entrepreneurs in Swaziland.
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    Youth enterprise development strategy 2013-2023
    (The Department of Small Business Development, 2014-05)
    The Department of Small Business Development is delighted to introduce to the public the Youth Enterprise Development Strategy (YEDS). South Africa is faced with the challenge of limited and poor participation of young people in the economy. A salient feature of this poor economic participation is high persistent youth unemployment, which means that young people are not acquiring the skills and work experience they need to assist in driving the economy forward. It is also difficult for young South Africans to secure business opportunities to develop their own businesses. The overall unemployment rate in the country stands at 25% and rises to about 36% if discouraged workers are included in the calculation1. Youth unemployment constitutes 73% of the total unemployment in the country. Therefore the ratio of youth to-adult unemployment is about 1:3 (i.e. for every unemployed adult there are three unemployed youth). About 42% of young people under the age of 30 are unemployed, compared to less than 17% of adults over the age of 30. Only one in eight working adults under the age of 25 have a job, compared with 40% in most emerging economies similar to South Africa. Employment of youth aged between 18 and 24 years old has fallen by more than 20% since December 2008. Unemployed young people tend to be less skilled and inexperienced; almost 86% do not have formal further or tertiary education, while two-thirds have never worked. The overall determinants of the high levels of youth unemployment are a lack of skills for jobs required by the economy; young job seekers believe the probability of finding a job is so low that they do not even look; lack of work experience; lack of job search capabilities and networks; companies find it risky and costly to employ young people; the rate of population growth among youth far exceeds the number of jobs created by the economy and, in certain instances, the low levels of economic growth. The Department of Small Business Development offers this policy instrument in response to the call made by the New Growth Path (NGP) for the state to provide bold, imaginative and effective strategies to create millions of new jobs that would also address youth unemployment and limited participation of young people in the economy. Through this strategy instrument, Government intends to foster youth economic participation by deliberately enhancing youth entrepreneurship, accelerating the growth of youth owned and managed enterprises capable of contributing to the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate and increasing youth self-employment and innovation.