21 Jun 2018

A young successful entrepreneur, Ms Messiah Shakamana has urged the youth to venture into business to choose unique projects that will thrive.

She said currently the market was saturated because most young people operated the same projects, some of which ended up collapsing due to stiff competition.

The 32-year-old Maun woman, who specialises in covering worn out shoes, making clutch bags and hand bangles, explained in an interview that she started her project after realising that it did not exist in Maun and surrounding areas.

She said young entrepreneurs needed to think outside the box, be creative and innovative in order to thrive in the industry.

She said it was a pity that most youth were beneficiaries of the Youth Development Fund programme, and “we had complaints from the youth office that they were failing to service their loans.

Yes, they were failing because their businesses were not making the expected profits because of lack of market,” she added.

Ms Shakamana believes that young entrepreneurs could only survive in the market if they changed their mindset and try to be innovative to attract customers.

In addition, she said Maun was a tourism destination hence the need to venture into projects which could produce attractive products.

She stressed the need to benchmark from other districts, noting that she learnt about her business through social media.

Ms Shakamana revealed that a woman from Selebi-Phikwe posted that she taught people how to cover worn out shoes and “I realised that the project was unique more so that some people believe that it suits men than women.

I tried my luck and today I am excelling because of the uniqueness of my project,” she added.

She started last year and she targets people during weddings and different cultural occasions. She uses leteisi and African prints to add the African taste.

Her business was self-funded and she intends to apply for available government initiatives to grow it so that she could create employment for others. ENDS