In the global arena, specifically in emerging economies, SMME’s play a vital role in contributing to a country’s employment and also its business growth. And right here at home in South Africa – the continent’s leading commercial powerhouse - it’s no different. As you walk about any city street ,daily,you see ideas being turned into action. At every street corner you see budding entrepreneurs displaying their wares, rendering their services and competing to eke out a living in the vibrant street markets. These are the people who have taken the initiative to do something for themselves, “vukuzenzele”, instead of waiting for someone to do something for them. This is the attitude we want to support! Kgomo go tsoshwa yeo e itsoshang!

When defining our SMME’s, we have to analyse the entrepreneurs who inspired their existence. We need to ascertain their behaviour, their characteristics and their methods of action. Because these are priceless individuals – ones ignited by hope, driven by ideas – and who constantly strive to turn business ideas into reality. They identify opportunities, they take risks, not only to succeed on a personal level, but to support their families – by simply exploiting and displaying their artistic business acumen and thereby creating viable ventures.

Now importantly, an entrepreneur can be anyone – young, old, retired, male or female - who just wants to initiate a new venture and try to make a solid start it in the competitive market with an eye on future growth. Or, an entrepreneur can be an established business owner who is innovative enough to want to grow to even greater heights. New ventures however need greater care, planning and foresight - as this process of entrepreneurship commences before the business is operational. It entails many facets – each of which need tightly focussed dedication – ranging from compiling a business plan, raising finance and finding the right location, to assembling a good team to make it all happen.

There is international consensus that current entrepreneurs are also the lifeblood of prosperous communities, and so it is important to support the next generation of wealth-creating entrepreneurs, particularly in these challenging economic times. And just recently, our new Minister of Finance reiterated the utmost importance of inspiring a strong and continued spirit of entrepreneurialism among all in order to strengthen our economy. With this in mind, it is therefore critical for us to support and stimulate entrepreneurship on all levels, as well as to eradicate barriers to entry and provide as much information about opportunities as possible.

Now according to The World Bank rating, South Africa stands at number 23/58 in terms of ease of registering a new business and at number 33/58 regarding regulations surrounding new businesses. The process of entrepreneurial support will also assist us as authorities in policy making, as well as all stakeholders involved in growing this sector. Comparing South Africa to the rest of the world, entrepreneurship is not at the level it should - or could be.

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), presently we are ranked as having one of the lowest Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rates amongst emerging markets. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is a non-profit academic research consortium which makes high-quality international research data on entrepreneurial activity readily available to as wide an audience as possible.  GEM is the largest single study of entrepreneurial activity in the world. Initiated in 1999 with 10 countries, GEM 2008 conducted research in 43 countries. GEM South Africa launched their 2008 National Report on May 20th to much media interest at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town. The event was attended by a number of the team’s sponsors including the Small Enterprise Development Agency, Swiss South African Cooperation Initiative and Standard Bank. The report revealed that in 2008, South Africa ranked 23rd out of 43 countries with a Total Early-stage Entrepreneurship Activity (TEA) rate of 7.8%. This is significantly below the average for all middle to low income countries (13.2%). These findings are consistent with South Africa’s performance in previous years.

In terms of new business activity South Africa ranked 38th out of the 43 countries with a new business prevalence rate of only 2.1%. This is significantly lower than the average of 4.6% for all GEM countries. The prevalence rate for established business owner-managers follows a similar disturbing trend – South Africa ranked 41st out of the 43 countries, with an established business rate of 2.3% indicating a high failure rate for South African start-ups.  

AFRICAN ENTREPRENEUR CONFERENCE

These results highlight that entrepreneurs are faced with various difficult challenges in South Africa and that a powerful support platform such as the African Entrepreneur (AE) project is not only essential, it is critical to assist with business development and survival. AE is a business information-based project that focuses on conferences and workshops where experienced and successful entrepreneurs share their experiences with aspirant and upcoming entrepreneurs. It is a public/private sector initiative that will pool resources in terms of information and experiences to assist entrepreneurs in starting and growing their businesses.

Research shows clearly that healthy economies are driven by strong entrepreneurial activity. In order for us to combat its host of socio-economic challenges it is imperative that entrepreneurship is fostered, encouraged, supported, informed and adopted. AE will provide a two-way avenue to not only receive information but to provide avenues for sharing experiences and networking opportunities. AE will look beyond our boundaries, and look into opportunities for our entrepreneurs to share experiences with other entrepreneurs from other cities and provinces in South Africa, SADC and the rest of Africa. This is in keeping with our mission of creating a legacy from the FIFA World Cup 2010 games by bringing different people and communities from Africa to work together towards continent prosperity.

This year, we will be joining the worldwide movement of entrepreneurs during the Global Entrepreneurship week from 16 to 22 November, with activities at academic institutions and shopping malls, encouraging the young and old to unleash their enterprising talents, and turn their ideas into reality. These will culminate in an entrepreneurship conference on the 19th November. Our themes for this year will focus on women, students and family businesses.

According to new research by GEM, it shows that South African women could be the key to unlocking economic growth in the country if better and more targeted support is made available to them. We pass them on our streets everyday, women who proudly display their wares in stalls on the pavements, while loudly shouting out competitive prices. These are the life-blood entrepreneurs of the country and, according to the latest GEM results, women-run businesses perform better on average than male entrepreneurs in the country.

Our objective is to create a thriving, must-do enterprise culture supported by communities through interaction. We want to inculcate a culture of celebrating successful entrepreneurs and inspire more entrepreneurs, especially the ones who failed, to try again. Furthermore, we want to encourage families to look for opportunities to start businesses from the comfort of their homes, which will make them resilient for different challenging times.