06 May 2021

Assistant Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development (MYSC), Mr Buti Billy, has encouraged stakeholders to find ways of facilitating youth to perform well in businesss.

Mr Billy was briefing stakeholders after touring MYSC funded projects in Kanye.

“Due to COVID-19, we should assist youth to change their ways of doing business if we are to achieve our mandate,” he said.

Mr Billy said he observed that in all the businesses that he had visited, COVID-19 had indeed proved to be a challenge.

In that regard, he said, it was crucial to make businesses become profitable and attractive so that youth could be motivated to venture into businesses rather than seeking employment from government.

“If we can attract them, I am adamant that most of them will be interested to engage in business”, he said.

Mr Billy indicated that it was also crucial to engage banks in an effort to facilitate loans for youth businesses since government could not manage alone.

He said to date, youth needed more funding to open their ideal business, unlike in the past where government was able to assist significantly.

“Let us encourage them to venture and engage in business as a way of living,” he said.

Mr Billy also advised that youth should be encouraged to forge partnerships and form cooperative rather than operating under sole proprietorship.

He said most individual businesses did not succeed since there was less monitoring.

“We need to do away with sole proprietorship. Cooperatives have lower failure rates and they tend to have better live than sole proprietorship,” he said.

Mr Billy also underscored the crucial role of marketing, adding that the success of business was dependent on marketing.

He said youth could utilise Facebook to market themselves, adding that the platform had opened more doors for many businesses.

He urged parastatals and departments whose services were mostly needed by the youth to ensure ease of doing business, however cautioning that unavailability of land needed to be addressed.

“As we operate one government, we should be able to speak the same language with the aim to empower the youth, therefore it is necessary that other stakeholders face the same direction that MYSC is facing,” he said.

For his part, MYSC deputy permanent secretary, Mr Kgopotso Ramoroka thanked stakeholders who were engaged in the tour.

He said it was necessary to establish how the youth had been affected in their businesses and their challenges in general, saying through interaction, the youth could be able to understand that they were also part of a crucial sector in business.

He said, ever since the ‘Akola ke Akole’ campaign which urged defaulters to pay Youth Development Fund loans, youth were motivated to honour the payment agreement.

“We have seen a considerable improvement as youth have shown determination towards paying back their loan. We urge those who are behind in their payments to do so, so that others can benefit,” he said.

Mr Ramoroka advised that more follow-ups needed to be conducted to establish how the youth could be assisted.

“One way to make impact is to work together in unity, therefore an inter-sectoral committee can make more impact,” he said. ENDS