Kudzai M Mubaiwa Business Hub
When we talk about innovation, Zimbabwe is not Harare and Harare is not Zimbabwe. If you have not been to other provinces and districts, you may start thinking the capital is all there is to it. From my experience in facilitating entrepreneurship development and capacity building programs across all the programmes, I can confirm that innovation and economic development is a requirement for all.
I am made to understand most Zimbabweans are living in the rural areas, and we cannot ignore that spread just as we cannot ignore the demographics that indicate women are more than men and that youths are more in terms of age ranges.
We must actively build on that.
The opportunity
There is a lot that can and must be done; in fact, I can easily count on my two fingers the number of innovation spaces/hubs/incubators/co-working spaces outside of Harare: and both are run in Bulawayo by the same set of young people.
We would like to see a day where such spaces are easily located in Mutare, Masvingo, Gweru, Kwekwe, Chitungwiza, Goromonzi, Lupane, Bubi and Umzingwane — for there are youth in those areas that are using local solutions to solve problems in their locality.
Given the right support, they can take and refine these in design and functionality and market.
They can convert ideas to businesses with well designed economic models and eventually scale.
These can leverage the opportunity of the internet and mobile penetration and payments to effectively transact.
A network of incubators in South Africa, has successfully implemented such an inclined model.
They are called Shanduka Black Umbrellas.
Recent winners of the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) Incubator of The Year Award, the project came to life in 2009 being the amalgamation of the Black Umbrella project and Shanduka Foundation.
The new firm had a vision to act as a catalyst in the development of entrepreneurs, especially the historically economically marginalised black South Africans.
Their work
The project is a non-profit enterprise development incubation partnership with the private sector, government, and civil society with a view to address low levels of entrepreneurship and high failure rate of 100 percent black owned enterprises.
Interventions used include entrepreneurship promotion and three year incubation.
They provide a structured and subsidised programme, and through national offices, allow clients access to expertise, office infrastructure, and resources to build a strong business foundation and ensure sustainable business.
Their programme starts with pre-incubation over three months, then full incubation over three years.
Transfer of business skills, knowledge and network linkages are thus achieved.
As per their website 8 incubators located across South Africa are operational, including Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Richards Bay and Port Elizabeth.
Targets and objectives are abundantly clear, they seek to establish 10 operational incubators in South Africa in 10 years, and at 8 already that is clearly within reach. Each incubator would support an average of 50 clients, and ensure 50 percent are sustainable due to the 3 year programme.
As at 2014, they were in eight cities, serving 164 client companies and creating/reserving some 964 jobs.
We need new jobs
In light of our current struggles, jobs are key.
Companies are laying off people in a major way and some closing down — for all sorts of reasons.
Most have to do with lack of viability.
The cold hard truth is some of them will never operate as they did at peak and others will completely never rise.
Yet, it may be that some of the answers we require are amongst us, amongst innovators and entrepreneurs, some of whom may just need a few resources to push them forward to build on ideas that will employ hundreds of their peers and beyond.
Business incubators can assist directly, with the support of other stakeholders.
It is particularly desirable for this to happen at local space outside of a capital.
This development of local hubs and innovation spaces by secondary cities approach is trending, and working in Kenya — where they take charge of their own surroundings and pursue local economic development.
Success factors for Shanduka and learning points for Zimbabwe
The incubators are fully funded — with the backing of Foundations, the hub managers can focus on core business of growing start-ups with minimal disturbances. Instead of whining and complaining, locals can start a space in their own location and crowd source resources from local government, politicians and businesses. Shanduka has the backing of Cyril Ramaphosa a notable businessman and former politician and activist. Nothing stops a local legend from pushing the innovation agenda in their own area.
Clear mandate — the incubators are well defined, they promote entrepreneurship, support idea generation, avail holistic support over three years and they clearly serve black South Africans. It is critical for every space to have clarity of purpose and the beneficiaries they serve, as well as what their ideal graduate must emerge like. We can benefit as a nation if local centres come up with an economic development mandate for themselves and activate their own economy.
Structured programming — while real estate is a good resource to have and solves the workspace problem for entrepreneurs, intangible programs are irreplaceable. Shanduka has a robust and structured program that builds the capacity of its clients in business planning, marketing, networking and getting investor ready. Their typical graduate will be well rounded and an easy sale to investors as groundwork will have been done. There is a place for events, but investment in the entrepreneur’s capacity and their enterprise through business development services does more than inspirational interactions alone. Incubators must work with credible, modern, practical business skills programmes.
Footprint — with eight centres across their nation, the Shanduka model and their centres are available in all the major areas and growing. They have clear targets — going to 10 cities, each serving 50 clients. This will not seem huge, but different from churning out large numbers of weak enterprises, the few they serve across the nation do well enough to earn their own living and create jobs for others in their immediate surroundings — directly contributing to local economic development. There is impetus for those spaces that are doing well in Harare and Bulawayo to reach out and spread into other parts of the nation, replicating their models.
Collaboration of centres — the fact that each space is part of a larger group grants them immediate access to entrepreneurial energy, a platform to share experiences, stir innovation, exchange ideas and learn best practice.
Ultimately, the greatest takeaway for us from Shanduka is to keep it simple: guide innovators and entrepreneurs in ideation, formalising, creating minimum viable products or processes development, and then testing/validating.
Give absolute attention to a few good clients and build an ecosystem around them, and from there we can build Zimbabwe from the bottom up.
- Kudzai M Mubaiwa is an economic development professional and managing consultant of InvestorSaint Pvt Ltd, a financial education company. She is also a certified incubator manager and cofounder of iZone. She can be reached via email on kudzi@investorsaint.co.zw or twitter handle @kumub