04 Jun 2018

Young people have been advised to come up with unique business ideas in order to secure a place in the market and also diversify the economy of Botswana. Speaking in an interview, Rainbow Tents and Jumping Castle founding director, Mr Amos Morwe, emphasised the need for young entrepreneurs to strive to be different if they have to reach out to customers and penetrate the market.

Mr Morwe, who hails from Gabane, expressed disappointment on individuals who kept on producing what had proven to be overdone already.  He identified another weakness in young people interested in doing business as venturing into the kind of business they neither had enough experience in or passion to see it through.

“We are all passionate in different ways and passion will absolutely drive one to come up with a different business idea,” he said.  As for his business, he said it was motivated by an experience he got from the company he used to work for providing the same services. It so happened that the company could not meet the needs of certain customers.

“That’s when I found the niche for my business, satisfying customers who were left in the cold,” he said.  The young entrepreneur highlighted that despite the hard and difficult job he found himself doing, he was happy. Another setback of his business is that it is seasonal, meaning that he sometimes finds himself without a single customer for a long time.

He said he was funded to the tune of P100 000 through the Youth Development Fund (YDF) to start his business in 2015 and the business had not only changed his own life, but had also transformed the lives of all the three employees he had taken aboard, adding that his aim was to work so hard that he would be able to stockpile products so that customers no longer wait for their orders to be made.

Mr Morwe counts buying his raw materials from South Africa as one of the challenges that bedevil his business. 

He also expressed disappointment at some customers who prefer to import goods directly from South Africa, instead of buying from local producers.  He urged young people who were involved in drug abuse to refrain from the vice as it would only destroy their future..ENDS