Guest Author: Cebiso Dlamini
Young Entrepreneur – Eswatini
The Kingdom of Eswatini is amongst the youngest countries in the world.
This has absolutely nothing to do with how long the citizens have been around nor the size of its borders but it alludes to fact that 79% of the 1.3 million people that make the population of the county are actually below the age of 35 years old. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the government.
The major challenge being the youth actually make a huge bulk of the 28% of people who are unable to find jobs. This again presents itself as an opportunity especially when a majority have aligned their thinking to entrepreneurship, these numbers actually present themselves as capacity for growth and significant development especially within small businesses. Research has actually shown that 1/3 quarters of businesses in Eswatini are run and owned by the youth and this number continues to grow yearly.
After graduating at the Limkokwing University in Botswana, I got a job from African Alliance as an Operations and Client Liaison Officer, and that didn’t take away from my journey in entrepreneurship, actually it enhanced it. A couple of months into my job, I soon realised that almost 80% of the employees had more than one stream of income.
I soon realised that almost 80% of the employees had more than one stream of income …Cebiso Dlamini
I was really surprised by this for the longest time I had felt that EmaSwati had a very complacent entrepreneurial culture, I sincerely believe we would sooner rather starve than embarrass ourselves on the streets, selling whatsoever products. I Sooner realised that most of the people I was working with were involved in business one way or the other. From the highest ranking employees for example the Manager runs a diary company that produces Emasi and other diary-products, to least of the employees the tea lady who is also a cleaner, runs a stokvel and also extended credit to people.
This startling realisation lead me to start an enterprise of my own. Staying next to a wattle forest gave me an idea to start a lumbering business, it was small and didn’t need licensing or permit and the most convenient at the time as I didn’t need any money to start up. My business was mainly targeted at those that have fire places in their households, however over 70% of the business actually came from other enterprises that operate in that area, and these were mainly those selling food such as braai(ed) meat. These type of enterprises form part the informal sector which is unregulated and accounts for about 37% of GDP which is worth R20.5 billion. A number of businesses lie in this threshold, despite government efforts to ease registration by introducing online platforms that allow for registration and drastically reduce the number of days it takes to register a business.
Over the past few years entrepreneurship has been engraved back into the Swazi culture and more and more youth are actually inclined to participate in entrepreneurship.
This might also be influenced by the several entrepreneurial programs that are run in High Schools such as Junior Achievement Swaziland, which challenges students to come up with solutions to communal problems through entrepreneurship. Such initiatives are also seen in Institutions of Higher Learning such as ENACTUS which has similar programs to Junior Achievement. The institutions themselves such as Limkokwing University have actually made modules such as entrepreneurship mandatory across all programs.Government has also had significant success in promoting TVET skills and this has had a positive influence.
These efforts have actually seen an active participation in entrepreneurship by our youth mainly in industries such as textile and fashion, Media and Photography, Events Management and Tech have been wildly dominated by youth. However there as still plenty of opportunities that lay open especially in agriculture, arts and entertainment, and green energy. Mentorship is one of the deepest needs for such entrepreneurs and they become the difference between a good success story or the form part of the 80% of enterprises that fail within a year of starting up. Government also needs to improve its policies and infrastructure in providing adequate support to entrepreneurship culture.
