Truth be told…
Brilliant move by Government in establishing a Ministry of Entrepreneurship! 👌🏾
There are however two fundamental flaws that I think Government ought to consider.
- Local Entrepreneurship Authority (LEA) and Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) should never be merged.
LEA’s sole mandate has always been to develop entrepreneurship in the country through awareness, training, coaching, hand holding, advocacy etc. Their efforts are purely developmental in nature and therefore their budget will be spent mostly on interventions and challenges besieging SMEs as a whole especially at the start up stages. There is a reason why most of LEA clients are start ups and not your Choppies and Sefalanas of this world!
2. CEDA on the other hand is a financier to viable projects that can create wealth and employment for Batswana.
In a perfect system, by the time LEA clients approach CEDA, their business concepts ought to be fully stress tested, to a point where funding becomes easier, almost seamless even.
But herein lies the problem:
a) In this new system we are going to create a “legitimate expectation” from aspiring entrepreneurs that their businesses will be funded simply because they will have passed through the “new LEA/CEDA vetting process”. Given our mindset as a people go tlile go nna nyoboko, for lack of a better word!
b) What then happens once a ‘graduate/beneficiary’ of the merger is funded after having gone through the stages of:
- Training and coaching
- Business plan development then funding; but fails to run a profitable business?
Do we blame CEDA because they have been part of the process from inception to failure? Or do we blame the Entrepreneur?🤷🏾♀️🤔
One love ❤️.
Reset.
We can do this!