A Rhodes University SMME (Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise) initiative, in partnership with Makana Municipality and the National Arts Festival, will help boost local entrepreneurs and small businesses by giving historically disadvantaged communities the opportunity to financially benefit from the Festival.
A Rhodes University SMME (Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise) initiative, in partnership with Makana Municipality and the National Arts Festival, will help boost local entrepreneurs and small businesses by giving historically disadvantaged communities the opportunity to financially benefit from the Festival.
Rhodes is represented on the project by the Rhodes Investec Business School (RIBS), and the university based Centre for Entrepreneurship and its Community Engagement Office.
Riana Meiring, responsible for Local Economic Development in Makana, is representing the municipality, with Tony Lankester involved in his capacity as CEO of the Festival and Ismail Mahomed as Festival Director.
The aim of the initiative, called Innovation Hub, is to provide a range of goods and services to Festival visitors, but RIBS will also be helping entrepreneurs manage their small businesses sustainably.
Interested local entrepreneurs were recently briefed on the initiative at a workshop held at the City Hall on 22 April.
Participants were requested to submit their business ideas to the municipality, outlining how they would execute these, what support they would need and what the impact would be in terms of job creation and such.
It was stressed that this was not intended to be an onerous process it could be handwritten and grammar and punctuation were not taken into account the main thing to convey was the “big idea”.
These submissions were sifted through by a panel consisting of RIBS, Makana Municipality, the Centre for Entrepreneurship and the Festival office, and six entrepreneurs were selected for training.
There will be five training sessions and these will take place at the Business School from 5 to 7pm on Thursday evenings, commencing on 20 May.
The focus will not only be on how to start a small business, but also how to manage it sustainably. The material for the training has been developed by Macdonald Kanyangale, a PhD student at RIBS, who has previous experience of this nature in Malawi.
Prof Owen Skae will join Kanyangale as a facilitator and there will also be input from the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Standard Bank.
A number of other support mechanisms are being put into place for these entrepreneurs. They will have back-office support at RIBS during the Festival, with student volunteers from the Community Engagement office providing services such as a booking facility, while seed funding is being provided by the municipality and the Festival to kick-start small businesses.
The entrepreneurs are also being given the opportunity to network: when they attend the RIBS Business Forum being addressed by Michelle Constant of BASA. Issued on behalf of: Rhodes University, Communications & Marketing Division
