Outdated strategies comes with devastating consequences, first in the firing line of ensuring a company’s bottom line are innocent workers who are the first to be laid off walking away with shallow severance packages, while overpaid executives takes millions plus the luxury of getting another Big Paying job even before they are laid off. To spur entrepreneurship and industrial development the leaders on the African continent, regional tax burdens in the interest of regional growth must be eliminated immediately. African leaders must learn to work with a common purpose and commitment to safe guard the future of our children in this colourful continent. Our ability to change the landscape of poverty in African communities must be driven by new business opportunities that channels capital into the continent, giving birth to a thriving Africa for decades to come.
Africa’s nearly one billion inhabitants have big consumer needs and astronomical buying power, despite this captive capital rich consumer audience only a few African government makes funding available for research and development into the continents entrepreneurs trends. It does appear that independent researchers cannot be trusted by those in power on the continent, only research instituted by the government units, which in most cases becomes a political mouthpiece and a farce, serving the interest of the political masters. Research and development is the bloodline of innovation, the playground for new ideas.
Africa’s entrepreneurship has no bloodline to science, technology, both critical machinery of a healthy entrepreneurship lifestyle and entrepreneurship culture. While the rest of the developed and developing world increases their spending on research and development, Africa is finding reason to spend less on research and development. The present teams of leaders are trapped in the Industrial Age where research and development was taboo. An inadequate rate of reinvestment in science and technology is restricting Africa’s feeder system for delivering a healthy supply line of entrepreneurs that generate good revenue and becomes a creator of jobs for locals all over the continent.
While Africa is moving backwards when it comes to research and development in the world of entrepreneurship, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a social survey directed at the individual does global research annually. The primary purpose of GEM is not to count the number of new businesses in different countries. It is about measuring entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurial activity through different phases of the entrepreneurial process. GEM generates more than measures of entrepreneurial activity; it also generates measures of entrepreneurial attitudes and aspirations. South Africa is the only African country represented by the University of Cape Town, who funds their own research and development in-house.
The problem is not money in order to fund SMME’s —African governments spend billions on military equipment’s and the cost of factional wars on the Continent is estimated at trillions of dollar annually. The real problem is the lack of commitment by those in power; they prioritize their own personal gains ahead of Africa’s development needs.
Due to poor visionary leadership the statistics of Africa’s entrepreneurs is a mystery that is despite the fact that well over 50% of jobs in South Africa are created in the informal sector.
• Micro and very small businesses in South Africa provided more than 55 per cent of total employment and 22 per cent of GDP in 2003. Small firms accounted for 16 per cent of both jobs and production and medium and large firms 26 per cent of jobs and 62 per cent of production.
• In Morocco, 93 per cent of all industrial firms are SMEs and account for 38 per cent of production, 33 per cent of investment, 30 per cent of exports and 46 per cent of all jobs.
• A 1997 survey in Benin showed that of the 666 SMEs counted, half were in commerce and the rest were mostly in construction, or were pharmacies and restaurants. Only 17 per cent were in manufacturing.
• SMEs in Kenya employed some 3.2 million people in 2003 and accounted for 18 per cent of national GDP.
• SMEs in Senegal contribute about 20 per cent of national value-added.
• Nigerian SMEs account for some 95 per cent of formal manufacturing activity and 70 per cent of industrial jobs.
Source: African Development Bank and OECD Development Centre, African Economic Outlook (2004-2005).
Africans leaders can no longer afford to view globalisation with suspicion when in fact it represents a window of opportunity for potential entrepreneurs on the continent. Through crafty regional partnerships within the family of African countries a regional community African of entrepreneurs can help create jobs and help grow local economies via partnerships. Globalisation is an unavoidable phenomenon, hitting our corridors of life. There is no remedy, no cure, no stop sign that can make it stop and go away. Africa needs a common strategy on developing regional power blocks that can withstand the force of globalisation.
In order to foster unity, enterprise development and competitiveness, as well as regional stability, African countries should step up their efforts to foster regional trade integration. Tariffs has to be eliminated immediately where they are still applied, and other barriers such as deficient physical and institutional infrastructure also have to be tackled. African entrepreneurs must work alongside each other in the interest of strengthening the business and product offering of Africa.
Globalization is an economic force, a strong wind, sweeping over our existence, infiltrating our homes, places of work, and places of worship. It grips the minds of our youth, causes them to act and think out of the box. We need to foster a mind shift away from government dependency to self-enlightenment and empowerment of the individual is a prerequisite for the promise and hope of a better life under entrepreneurship. This new thinking includes not only government officials but the entire stakeholder community, which must act and think differently about making the most in the information age.
Our institutions of higher learning cannot continue to be just places of learning while elsewhere in Europe and America they’re also engine rooms of entrepreneurial incubation. Our youth must see this fresh wave of the information age as a ‘dream come true’ where they can set-up their own Silicon Valleys in rural towns like they’re doing in India and China. Again, money is not the Problem, we need a Metamorphosis of the African Mind to think on behalf of the collective instead of the Ego-centric tube that globalization brings along. The problem is not money!
Anthony Phillip Williams
Editor: SMME XCLUSIVE MAGAZINE
0726272080
1st October 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment