Letter in Business Day: SA must nurture entrepreneurship

Today's Business Day features my letter on entrepreneurship which was prompted by three recent articles in their excellent new comment and opinion pages, as well as my visit to Riversands Incubation Hub last week.

I am very pleased Mmusi Maimane is pushing the need to support entrepreneurship in his campaign to take over from Helen Zille as DA leader. For without entrepreneurs, we will not meet our job creation target of 11 million new jobs by 2030. Big businesses shed jobs to cut costs to become more competitive, new and growing businesses create them. Government's top priority must, therefore, be to introduce policies that maximise the job-creating opportunities for new and growing business.

You can read my letter on BDLive here or the unedited version below:

May I commend you on your new opinion and commentary section in the revamped Business Day. There is always something new and interesting to read.

Wednesday’s edition featured two articles of particular relevance to South Africa’s prospects. It is common cause that job creation will depend on the formation and growth of small and medium enterprises, which in turn will depend on their being nurtured and provided with opportunities to enter the mainstream economy. In the longer term, an entrepreneurial economy requires an education system which teaches and instills an entrepreneurial culture in our youth.

 Riversands Incubation Hub (Lesley Stones, “Incubation hub provides space to hatch success”) and the recommendations of Taddy Blecher’s entrepreneurship in education sub-committee of the Human Resources Development Council (Stephen Timm, “A new subject: Learning how to think out of the box”), if successfully implemented, are grounds for hope.

Coincidentally I visited Riversands on Wednesday and was impressed by its scale and ambition. This R500 million investment by Century Property Development and the Jobs Fund, if replicated in communities across South Africa, could transform the success and growth rates of new black-owned businesses which will be the engine of job creation. Just a stone’s throw away but in another world, in Diepsloot, informal traders struggle to make ends meet and most have no ambition other than survival. This is not the way to end poverty or to create wealth.

South Africa has one of the lowest Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rates in sub-Saharan Africa and this must change if job-seekers are to become job-creators. I am encouraged by comments from the Department of Basic Education that it  aims to strengthen the implementation of entrepreneurship across the schooling system. There is huge expertise in the private sector which schools should tap into.

Here again, today’s Business Day hits the sweet spot (Paul Harris, “Exuberant Youth tied to grew hairs”). Government should be beating a path to the doors of small and big business to incentivise them to offer their skills and expertise to assist incubation hubs such as Riversands and the entrepreneurship in schools initiatives. Skills development on the BBBEE scorecard needs to be supplemented by tax incentives for individuals to mentor budding entrepreneurs.

Is it too much to hope Minister of Small Business Development Lindiwe Zulu is listening?

Yours

Toby Chance MP

Democratic Alliance

Shadow Minister for Small Business Development

Constituency Head: Soweto West