Over 60% of businesses that are started by young people fail within the first year of opening. This can be largely attributed to the following major factor, as per the GEM report: Culture – entrepreneurship is not encouraged as a career in schools, where there is more focus on seeking employment than creating employment. There is room for increased participation through a deliberate policy to introduce an entrepreneurial and innovation culture through competitions, training, workshops and seminars while these teenagers are still in schools.
Given the right framework, teenagers in Africa can be nurtured while still in school to be innovative. The harsh reality is that education itself will be meaningless if it fails to teach young people how to apply it in improving their societies. Africa, and indeed South Africa, is fortunate enough to have roughly about 50% of its population below the age of 20 years. If
this resource can be exploited for
innovation by instilling this culture at an early age then we will see an explosion of new products, business systems and new thoughts emerging.
In order for this to happen,
governments, parents and schools must all be focused in giving the right education to our young people.
continued on page 14
Lydia Zingoni is Founder and Director of SA Teen Entrepreneur Foundation. She holds several degrees in Economic History, Information Management, and Marketing. She has worked for several years as an Information specialist in The United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Her last corporate job as CPUT Libraries Director, exposed her to the business formation needs of potential young entrepreneurs. Lydia, has run several businesses of her own in book trade, business information directories, free advertising papers, to internet cafes. Her passion has been and still is to instil the young minds to a culture of entrepreneurship.
SA Teen Entrepreneur Foundation was formed purely as a channel for the cultivation and promotion of an
entrepreneurial culture in all our teens in South Africa and beyond. To date there are 18,5 million Teens in South Africa out of a total population of 49 million people. Therefore Teenagers represent more than a third of the nation’s population. Through SA Teen Entrepreneur Foundation Lydia’s dream is create entrepreneurial programmes, competitions and networks that will penetrate to teenagers into all provinces.
The Innovation Journal September 2012 | Management Today 13
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