Swaziland stands at the precipice of an entrepreneurial revolution led by tech-savvy and business savvy young people. Increasingly, Swaziland’s young people are taking the less travelled path of launching businesses in addition to or in lieu of formal employment. From “side hustles” that run in parallel to full-time corporate jobs, to fully blown full-time small business endeavors, what is emerging in our country perhaps for the first time, is a legitimization of entrepreneurship as a credible career path. What used to be a fall back to career option for when jobs are scarce is beginning to be the first option for some university students and graduates, some of whom are turning down corporate jobs to launch their own businesses. Unemployment is however still the major motivation for entrepreneurship, but what has changed is that now entrepreneurial efforts are coming with more innovation and business acumen. The young businesswomen and businessman of today and tomorrow are not building the usual businesses: they are innovating across products and business models, often taking advantage of advances in technology to deliver solutions to everyday problems in new and exciting ways.
However, the entrepreneurship ecosystem – the suite of support systems and services that is required to launch and grow start-up businesses systemically – is only nascent and hasn’t fully materialized. Three main services must be firmly in place to position entrepreneurs for success: Business Development Support services (BDS), strong mentoring networks, and funding. The most common BDS includes services for the day-to-day operation of businesses: credible accounting, legal advice on compliance, information communications technology, human resources, to name a few. But more importantly, BDS includes the provision of intelligence on an enterprise’s strategic positioning in the market – understanding how to price a product, which customer segment to target, how to address competition from similar products, and so forth. While service providers have emerged that address the operational aspects of BDS, there is a serious gap in access to reliable business intelligence that young entrepreneurs can afford. Business communities have emerged that congregate entrepreneurs to facilitate not only the impartation of business wisdoms from more seasoned business leaders to novice entrepreneurs, but also the sharing of experiences among entrepreneurs themselves.
Access to the appropriate funding remains the key impediment to unlocking early-stage, innovative Swazi youth entrepreneurship. Existing avenues to access business funding largely systemically exclude young people from participating, requiring collateral, strong financial history, assured future earnings, among many requirements. But the business of innovative entrepreneurship is a risky one: there are no assets to offer up as collateral; there is no assurance that customers will come; there is no certainty that loan installments will be paid; there is no certainty that profits will be sustained. As a result, not many financiers are willing to work with early-stage entrepreneurs that have just refined their ideas and are looking to shape them into businesses. Such entrepreneurs must seek capital that is both risk tolerant and patient to seed and grow their ventures.
We set up Swazi Ventures as a direct response to these ecosystem needs, particularly those of strategic advice and funding. Swazi Ventures provides funding and strategic support to launch and grow high-potential early-stage Swazi start-up SMEs that are addressing some of the most pressing challenges and capturing some of the most promising business opportunities in the country. Through this blog, we will share what we know about launching and scaling winning businesses.
