28 Mar 2021

Assistant Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Culture Development Mr Buti Billy has commended the youth e running Youth Development Fund(YDF) funded businesses for their commitment. 

Speaking during an appreciation tour of YDF funded businesses around Francistown, he said funding youth projects was  government’s way of trying to address unemployment, and as such encouraged funded entrepreneurs to expand and create employment for others. 

The assistant minister toured Tom’s Cyber Café owned Mr Tabona Mufaladi, a person living with disability, who was funded for an internet café business. 

Mr Tabona shared that the internet café was running smoothly despite few challenges. 

Mr Billy encouraged him to grow the business and pay his loan on time so as to create an opportunity for others to get a chance to be funded, and at the same time creating employment for other youth. 

He encouraged all YDF beneficiaries to treat funding as an investment by government into their business and to work hard as an appreciation of such token. 

He also visited The Hugg Group, a company which produces cleaning chemicals and detergents owned by Mr Ndiye Shagwa. The business was said to be doing well since its funding in 2020. 

Mr Shagwa expressed appreciation for the opportunity to be sponsored to start his company. He said so far everything was running smoothly and had managed to hire about six employees. 

He mentioned that he had to take some lessons from Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) to equip himself with the relevant skills needed to operate his business. 

He said among his clients was Ministry of Basic Education and Selebi Phikwe Town Council who had procured cleaning chemicals and sanitisers among others. 

Mr Shagwa explained that his main challenge was need to procure equipment which could make production easy and effective. 

He said since he started operating he had been able to service his loan, resulting a good relationship with MYSC. 

The owner of Teejam Investments, a company which manufactures and sells toilet papers, Ms Kushatha Masuku told the assistant minister that since her business started operating things had been going well up until the outbreak of COVID-19. 

She said since 2019 business had been slow, but she was not discouraged from marketing her products. 

She mentioned that wholesalers were not buying from them due to their specific branding and packaging requirements, which were costly for emerging businesses. 

“Despite this challenge we still have some clients such as primary schools and private hospitals whom we are grateful of their support”, she said.  Ends