11 Sep 2026

Ms Sithabisiwe Makgoeng has marked thousands of English essays. But the paper that changed her life was not written by a student.

It was an academic article on entrepreneurial orientation.

That night, the Francistown Senior Secondary School teacher capped her red pen and opened a new notebook. What poured out became ‘Entrepreneurship: A Practical Handbook: From Idea Generation to Venture Growth’; a book she will launch on September 12 at Cresta Thapama Hotel in Francistown.

For years, Ms Makgoeng has stood in front of students at Francistown Senior Secondary School teaching English.

But next month she will stand before a different audience, this time as an author, to launch a book she hopes will change how Batswana think about business.

“Every year we prepare students for the world of work, but we rarely prepare them for the world of creating work,” Ms Makgoeng said.  “I started asking myself, what happens after Form 5? After university? Too many of our young people are waiting to be employed instead of learning how to employ others.”

Ms Makgoeng said the book is aimed at aspiring entrepreneurs, those already in business, and students who want to understand how to build and sustain enterprises in the Botswana context.

She explained that while many books have been written on entrepreneurship, hers seeks to bridge a gap she observed in the way business concepts are understood locally.

“The idea was born after reading an academic article by Qalati et al on Entrepreneurial Orientation, which highlighted challenges such as start-ups collapsing within a short period, lack of innovation, and low resilience among new businesses,” she added.

The book covers 20 chapters that take readers from the first spark of an idea to building a lasting venture.

Topics include the qualities and lifestyle of a successful entrepreneur, entrepreneurial mindset and opportunity identification, business formation, risk management and legal foundations, the business roadmap, and financing the entrepreneurial venture.

The author, Ms Makgoeng, chose those 20 topics because she is basically mapping out “the full journey of an entrepreneur” from idea to impact.

Given her background in training students in language and literature, and now moving to “a classroom without desks”, the book is structured like a curriculum. She wants readers to be well-trained before they enter business.

The choice of topics in Ms Makgoeng’ s book is deliberate. It reads like a curriculum, taking the reader from the very first spark of an idea to building a venture that can last.

“I wanted to take the reader through the full journey and this is the reason why I begin with the person, the qualities, lifestyle and mindset of an entrepreneur before moving to the practicalities of opportunity identification, business formation and mapping a business roadmap,” she added.

She then tackles the areas where many businesses collapse: risk management, legal foundations and financing. The book closes with “All Said and Done: Building the Entrepreneurial Mindset for the Future”, bringing the reader full circle.

For the reader, this structure means preparation, not luck. Instead of entering business and learning only through failure, the book offers a complete toolkit that blends soft skills with hard skills.

It tells the reader that motivation alone is not enough, one also need to understand registration, contracts, risk and money.

More importantly, the topics reflect Ms Makgoeng’s core message of resilience. By including chapters on how to manage risk and rise after falling, she is training readers to expect challenges and to be ready for them.

In that sense, the book mirrors her first name, Sithabisiwe, meaning “happiness” and in writing the book, then her responsibility is to share that happiness with a hope that those who will read it will find happiness in the journey of business.

To the reader, it means this is not just a book to inspire, but it discovers that the greatest happiness is not just in starting a business, but being equipped with the knowledge and mindset to start, sustain and grow businesses. ends