Entrepreneurship Development Africa

EDA Methodology

Bottom-up
Bottom –up means that the project initiative comes from the students rather than from us causing the entrepreneurs to take full ownership of his/her project. This critical for the entrepreneur because it gets them to solve their own problems and challenges, instead of saying “this was your idea, now this is your problem”.
Every beneficiary goes through a transformation process that shapes changes his/her worldview from a mindset of dependency to where he/she becomes self-motivated and responsible. It starts really small with so that the entrepreneurs can grow with their project and learn the lessons as they grow the business under our mentorship.

Aimed at economic sustainability
Many NGO’s start entrepreneurship programs that subsidize entrepreneurial projects. The drawback is however that it supports the projects artificially and in many cases such projects are not economically feasible and can never grow to a point where it is self-supporting. So in the end they are creating more dependency. It is more beneficial for an entrepreneur to start over ten times and end up with viable business, than to start an extensive project that is doomed by the market conditions. Dealing with failure and learning from mistakes is a key attribute of an entrepreneur.


Linking with existing Structures
The unique quality of the South-African economy makes it possible to link a group or a person from a “third world” rural environment directly with a corporate “first world” environment. In many other African countries this is not possible because there is no such infrastructure. This is not possible or desirable in all cases, but is something that is taken into account. A vital part of community and economical development and eradicating poverty is building bridges (even global networks) between under-developed poor communities and developed more affluent communities. In development language this is called reciprocity (cf. B Meyers, walking with the poor).Therefore we realized that if the training offered does not lead to the exportation of skills and products from our impoverished area into more affluent areas in South Africa (and globally) and creating of avenues of importation of currency from more affluent areas into our impoverished area in income generating efforts, will continue to miss its goal. Good entrepreneurship training should also make students aware of the impact of global economy even in small underdeveloped rural parts of the world (the publication of Sachs)
The EDA Development Model

The EDA Entrepreneurship Development Model is illustrated in the following diagram

EDA creates to “Push” effect in the market by identifying and training entrepreneurs, at the same time a “Pull” effect is created by structuring and developing market opportunities.
The full program consists of :
• Training
o Life Skills Training
o Technical Skills development
o Business Skills
o Entrepreneurial Skills
• Access to Capital
• Mentorship & support
• Infrastructure Development

The Program

The EDA beneficiaries consist of young people between the age of 18 and 25 from the Kwandebele area. The students have to complete a phased entrepreneurship training-course as explained in the following section

Phase 1- Life skills development

The Primary Aim: of the Life Skills training is to:
√ Address Cultural Challenges e.g. eye contact
√ Stress the importance of Personal Presentation
√ Outline Worldviews
√ Inspire and motivate.
The Secondary Aim is:
√ Discipline in attendance and being on time
√ Filter process (minimum attendance of 85% to progress)

There are currently 300 new students enrolled in phase 1. Training material includes:
√ Contextualized Tswane University of Technology (TUT) material
√ Internally developed material

Phase 2 – Entrepreneurship training

The Primary Aims of the Entrepreneurship training are to develop:
√ Basic business principals
√ Basic financial management
√ Idea development
The Secondary Aimsare:
√ Discipline in attendance and being on time
√ Filter process (minimum attendance of 85% to progress)
. Training material includes:
√ Contextualized Tswane University of Technology (TUT) material
√ Internally developed material
√ Practical exercises-Using SAIE material (South African Institute for Entrepreneurship)


Phase 3 – Project start-up with Micro Finances

The Primary Aims: of this phase are to develop:
√ Learn business principals from practice and mentorship
√ Learn fin management through practice and mentorship
√ Develop small businesses
The Secondary Aim is:
√ Opportunity to inspire feasible business opportunities

.This phase is a practical exercise through small loans and Mentorship



Phase 4 – Infrastructure development

The Primary Aims: of this phase are to develop:
√ To get projects to work together and identify synergy
√ To network projects with existing business
√ To build up the economic infrastructure of Kwamhlanga
√ To Register projects as legal businesses
√ The 6 most successful projects get to use the entrepreneurship incubator facilities

The 135 students in phase 3 are now moving to phase 4. This phase focuses on networking and project synergy and specialization