22 Mar 2020

Head of Stanbic Bank Botswana’s incubator accelera8 programme, Mr Larona Makgoeng, says thought leadership is key to development of strong entrepreneurship drivers around the world. 

Acknowledging statistics prepared by the World Bank pinning Africa’s youth population bracket as the largest in the world, with a 2030 forecast growth of 30 per cent, Mr Makgoeng said strategic efforts needed to be put in place to develop capacities for youth to take more space in innovations that could drive the future. 

In an interview recently, Mr Makgoeng noted that Botswana did not have enough economic drivers, with some manufacturing and distribution centres being occupied by churches. 

He added that while unemployment quarterly releases by Statistics Botswana pinned unemployment at around 20 per cent, this cast a dark reality of employability chances for the youth, adding that entrepreneurship was a viable pool to abate the situation. 

Mr Makgoeng said capacitating youth to leverage on existing networks for wealth creation would be good for a burgeoning economy of ideas. 

Mr Makgoeng further said seed funds would never be enough for entrepreneurs to scale value chains, noting that entrepreneurs needed to be conversant in transacting beneficial relationships to meet their growth aspirations. 

“At the Stanbic incubator accelera8 space, we believe that entrepreneurs do not need funding to be successful,’ he said. 

He explained that they equipped their participants with knowledge to co-create with others, in order to make beneficial relationships they could leverage on to balance economies of scale, noting that the demand for funding had the downside of killing entrepreneurship. 

So far, Mr Makgoeng said, the incubator accelera8 programme had unbundled technical capabilities to start-ups and other companies to improve their product eccentricities. BOPA