Centre for Entrepreneurship hopes to eradicate poverty in Mpumalanga

A new Centre for Entrepreneurship is being set up in Mpumalanga, South Africa in an effort to foster business activity and overcome poverty in the region. This comes as a welcome step in an effort to support one of the country’s most impoverished provinces.

Speaking at the Mpumalanga Provincial Small Business Summit on this week, Minister of Small Business Development Lindiwe Zulu said the community where the centre will be located was identified through a thorough needs assessment, low startup costs and the number of new potential business.

As reported by SA News, the centre will be located at the Gert Sibande Training and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) early 2015.

Minister Zulu said that initiatives like these are critical to create constructive dialogue between big and small businesses:

This Centre for Entrepreneurship instrument is critical for this province where there are big businesses who are also struggling to get good SMMEs and cooperatives that can be integrated into their value chains. We can utilise this to properly support artisans that are being trained at the TVET’s to become reliable suppliers and be properly integrated in the value chains.

Minister Zulu stated that in order to overcome poverty, unemployment and inequality as outlined in the National Development Plan, the department will implement support mechanisms. These include access to finance, business skills development, market access, competitiveness, easing the regulatory environment, advancing localisation and leveraging on public and private sector procurement.