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.

Ad Hoc Joint Committee on Probing Violence against Foreign Nationals fails to adopt its report

The Parliamentary Ad Hoc Joint Committee on Probing Violence against Foreign Nationals sat yesterday at 5pm, supposedly for the last time. Except that of the twenty Members of the Committee, only six showed up so it was unable to form the quorum necessary to adopt its report. 

My DA colleague Sej Motau MP and I were the only National Assembly Members to attend the meeting.

Reflections on the LeaderEx / SiMODiSA Start-up Scale-Up Summit

The Sandton Convention Centre buzzed with excitement and expectation on Thursday as members of South Africa's entrepreneurial ecosystem - an informal club of growing confidence and distinction - gathered for the first combined LeaderEx / SiMODiSA Start-Up Scale-Up summit.

Aimed at achieving scale and critical mass, the merging of the two events provided participants with a smorgasbord of choice, with over 200 exhibitors, a programme of 40 intense masterclasses, and opportunities for one-on-one sessions with some of South Africa's top business coaches.