By Mawano Kambeu
The now famous ‘UNZA 6’ graduates who protested about the lack of employment in the country and were subsequently arrested, have created a heated debate in Zambia around employment, the role of government in job creation and entrepreneurship. This topic has clearly divided the country with many hurling insults and criticisms at the graduates, and others coming to their defence.
In all this, the bigger picture is being lost as the UNZA 6 represent any trained and skilled youth out there that has had education and training, but can’t find employment to apply or develop those skills in their chosen field. There is nothing wrong with standing up and demanding more from your leaders and asking for them for improvement, done the right way of course than an impromptu demonstration.
Everyone can agree that government plays a strong role in shaping the employment situation in the nation, as it is the country’s biggest employer and has the ability to create an environment for businesses to succeed.
Four areas, all of which can be impacted by government, drive the employment landscape in Zambia. These are:
1) Government’s own ability to hire
2) Heavy Industry- Only heavy industries like mining have the ability to provide mass employment as well as agriculture as a collective industry.
3) Manufacturing and Processing- The biggest gap and opportunity in the Zambian economy currently is the lack of manufacturing and agro-processing happening.
The fourth area is entrepreneurship- especially Zambian owned sustainable businesses that have the opportunity to be scaled. Sadly, today’s entrepreneur in Zambia faces a lot of challenges with access to capital being the biggest one that I hear, and this has merit. Capital is hard to get and if one can get capital, the cost of that capital is enormous. If it isn’t, why don’t we hear about more Zambian Entrepreneurs owning a mine or a manufacturing plant?
Kennedy Mulenga once posted the following comment on my Facebook page months ago and it stuck with me.
“The Zambian culture needs to change with respect to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship should no longer be seen as a route for those who have failed in education [or failed to finds jobs]. Entrepreneurship is the engine of economic development.”
Kennedy’s words have merit; we should not push people in entrepreneurship because they have no other options. Otherwise all we will get is hundreds of people doing the same thing and people being entrepreneurs for survival purposes or “hustling” until things get better. How many times have you gone to the market or roadside and seen 20 women all selling tomatoes and vegetables? What is wrong with that picture?
Now I am not saying that giving people SME loans to go and sell tomatoes or start a kantemba is wrong. My deepest respect goes out to those people who are making a living this way as it is hard out here. But would it not be better to have a strategic entrepreneur or visionary who actually creates a sustainable business that then goes on and employs 20, 30 or even a 100 people?
Zambia needs the strategic entrepreneur - the entrepreneur who creates a business because he or she identifies a gap or trend in the market and then capitalizes on that opportunity. This applies to the majority of entrepreneurs. This is the person who finds a better way of doing something like the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the person who builds a filling station because they realize the nearest one is 50km away. It is also the person who opens up a bar; because the nearest bar is 10 meters away. (Yes we do have a lot of bars in Zambia alongside car washes, restaurants, salons and barbershops to name a few).
We need visionaries - entrepreneurs who will discover or help develop ideas that can transform our way of life. Let’s not forget that by doing this; they will end up making a lot of money in the process. The late Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are all examples of visionaries. It is fair to say that these visionaries are rare, and they are not all American.
So, today I want to create a strategic entrepreneur. It starts with noticing a gap in the market, observing and correcting a flaw in a process, or finding a way to improve an existing process.
For our engineers from UNZA, let’s take an everyday process in Zambia, like washing clothes that is still done by hand by the majority of Zambians. This is a task that requires human capital; taking up time and energy, it requires material resources such as water, which can be difficult to come by at times, and soap which costs money. How do we improve the process of washing clothes for the average Zambian?
This could come in three formats:
1) An idea to reduce the human capital cost of the process by making the process of washing clothes quicker and less labour intensive (keep in mind in the developed world, the solution was washing machines, which won’t work in Zambia for the masses. So what is the solution for Zambia?)
2) If water is a challenge when washing, how do you solve for that problem?
3) If soap is expensive, can a cheaper or longer lasting soap be developed than what is out there in the market?
This line of thinking and challenge can be applied to anything, not just washing and not just small business. It could be applied to your current job if you are in formal employment. It is all about the ability to think critically and add value, that is what will move us as a country forward and away from survival entrepreneurship to sustainable entrepreneurship, where the doctors, lawyers, carpenters, accountants and engineers can be hired by these entrepreneurs.
For those of you who want to take up my challenge, or have new business ideas or wish to expand your existing business and capital is a challenge, then take part in the Nyamuka Business Plan Competition. Nyamuka Zambia is an initiative that is doing its part to transform the entrepreneurship environment in Zambia by training and offering resources to over 60 entrepreneurs who make it pass the application phase and eventually awarding K75, 000 to 19 businesses, and K250,000 to the grand prize winner.
About the Author:
Mawano Kambeu is one of Zambia’s most celebrated local entrepreneurs and is the founder of Dot Com Zambia LLC, a technology company specializing in e-commerce platforms for the Zambian market. A company that started with 1 employee in 2009 and now employs 18 people, Dot Com Zambia and their Bus Ticketing System, which makes intercity travel for consumers more convenient, was recently named by Harvard University as Africa’s Best New Venture for 2015.
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