Invitation to the Chance Glassworks - Everybody's Story - launch event

An invitation has gone out to attend the Chance Glassworks - Everybody's Story - launch event on November 24th (see my previous post for info on the UK Lottery funding announcement). Sadly I won't be able to attend but I hope some of my readers will make it.

Details of the launch, and links to videos and other articles on Chance Brothers, can be found here.

History West Midlands magazine has done much to revive interest in Chance Brothers, as well as the history of "the people of the West Midlands, their ideas, innovation and industry."

There is a connection between the magazine and South Africa - publisher Mike Gibbs is a regular visitor to and dedicated supporter of Gansbaai in the Overberg region of the Southern Cape.

Gansbaai has just won Gold in the Responsible Tourism Awards destination category - see here for details.

The town, close to Danger Point where a Chance Brothers lens was installed in the newly erected lighthouse in 1895, is a mecca for whale-watching, shark-diving and the launch point for visitors to Dyer Island, breeding ground for tens of thousands of the endangered African Penguin.

The lighthouse was placed close to the site where the HMS Birkenhead went down forty three years earlier - a notorious shipwreck which gave birth to the naval drill of "women and children first." You can read about it here.

Well done to Mike for all your endeavours!

Chance Brothers research project gets UK lottery funding

I have just been forwarded this article which appeared in yesterday's Birmingham Post:

Historic former glassworks in the Black Country which supplied windows for the Houses of Parliament will be the subject of an in-depth research project to discover more about its impact on the area.

A grant of £48,200 has been awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to Birmingham-based built environment charity Made to examine the history of the Chance Brothers Glassworks in Smethwick.

Made will oversee the 18-month project which will look at the impact of the Grade II factory on the region as well as investigating its national and international reach.

Read the full article here.

Another sign that public interest in Chance Brothers continues to grow year by year.

BizNews picks up my article on reforming our innovation and venture capital ecosystem

BizNews, owned and run by veteran financial journalist Alec Hogg, ran my piece on what SA needs to do to stimulate and support innovation and high-growth businesses. Click here to read it.

South Africa lags badly in this sector - venture capital financing innovation to stimulate and support new businesses and which create large numbers of jobs.

Is government listening?

There are moves afoot, but they do not go far enough.

City of Johannesburg negligence: Public Protector sticks up for a small business owner

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to Afternoon Drive on 702 with Xolani Gwala, and caught the tail end of a call from a very distressed man who related how negligence by the City of Joburg had resulted in his business closing down and him losing everything. No-one was listening to him and all attempts to get the city to respond had failed. The City was even ignoring a report by the Public Protector that found against the City, and called for remedial action.

I called 702 and asked for this man's details and not long afterwards we were in contact. His name is Tshepo Kgaudi, and his business was the PhindiK line of shoes, designed in South Africa, made in and imported from Brazil.

What I discovered was truly shocking. For five years, the City had done everything possible to protect itself and an ANC local councillor of dubious ethics, Councillor Mzwandile Zwane,  from admitting its liability in the chain of events leading to the closure of the business.

Press statement: Small Business Ministry misses every one of its performance targets

Democratic Alliance press statement by

Toby Chance MP

DA Shadow Minister of Small Business Development 

Small Business Ministry misses every one of its performance targets

16 October 2015

Release: immediate

The Small Business Development Department’ 2014/15 Annual Report reveals that Lindiwe Zulu’s newly formed ministry has failed dismally in fulfilling its mandate by missing every single one of its performance targets for the year. 

Amid a crippling national unemployment crisis, the department was set up to support the small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMME) sector in creating new jobs and to “lead an integrated approach to the promotion and development of Small Businesses and Co-operatives through a focus on the economic and legislative drivers that stimulate entrepreneurship to contribute to radical economic transformation”.

Innovation and entrepreneurship: are we commercialising our creativity?

South Africa is in the top 5% of countries by value of its private equity market as a proportion of GDP but in the bottom 5% by the same measure of venture capital.

This was one of the startling facts to emerge at the Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship Round Table in Pretoria on Tuesday, which I attended. It was organised by the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI), an agency of the Department of Science and Technology.

The implication of this disparity is that we have a thriving market for private investment in mostly medium to large businesses that generate predictable cash flows and profits, but a weak market for investment – sourced from both the public and private sectors and individuals – in start-up, early-stage and development-stage businesses.

Unity Fellowship Church still at loggerheads with the City of Joburg

This afternoon I got a call from a member of the Unity Fellowship Church in Chiawelo, Soweto. He informed me that the church was conducting a sit-in at the Rea Vaya bus station next to the City of Joburg municipal offices in Braamfontein. They had just been muscled off the public square next to the Mayor's parlour, where they had requested a meeting with the Mayor to demand an answer to their petition lodged in June calling on the City to address the church's grievances.