The Face of Social Entrepreneurship

The Face of Social Entrepreneurship

Recently, I did a financial request presentation to our student society, and for the first time, understood the difficulty in accessing publicly available funds for our venture. The idea of entrepreneurship is quite different in Africa than in North America: people here become entrepreneurs by choice; people in Africa become entrepreneurs out of necessity. Many of these young entrepreneurs come from the slums, and have learned the hard way, that they cannot afford to sit around and wait for the government to do things for them. That is why there is tremendous significance in supporting a social program designed to help entrepreneurs of these developing countries, but unfortunately this idea still relatively far back on many priority lists.

Most of Africa’s growth in the last several years has been stimulated by entrepreneurship. Young people are seeking to become entrepreneurs rather than finding employment, either tempted by overnight millionaire stories, fueled by a passion to succeed, or driven by the determination to improve conditions around them. Therefore, business ideas pitched by these youths seems to gravitate towards several patterns:

• Businesses are clones of pre-existing ones.
• The business is intended to “make a name” for the owner.
• The business has a valuable and viable idea.

 

Our mission is to work with young entrepreneurs of all backgrounds and goals to help them develop a viable business plan, with a strong emphasis on social entrepreneurship ideas. The objective is to look for more than just monetary profit, but innovative answers in social problems. These entrepreneurs will represent the upcoming faces of Social Entrepreneurship in Africa, and in a way we, as North American students of higher education, are also the grassroots social entrepreneurs of the West. There is no accounting profit to be had in our initiative, but the value that it generates for each student involved is immeasurable.

I feel like there are several important aspects to nurturing entrepreneurs in Africa:

• Mentorship: Ensure that the entrepreneurs have the education and assistance they need to run their business sustainability.
• Localization: Think “local”. Encourage the youths to establish businesses that are for the benefit of the local people, that would solve local problems, and would employ locally available resources.
• Financial Assistance: Start-up financing for social initiatives, as well as micro-financing (for a must-read on this topic check out Muhammad Yunus' book "Banker to the Poor").

With the emergence of international programs, academic interest, and workshops in Africa, mentorship and idea generation is becoming less of a burden, whereas finance assistance is still heavily sought after. I hope that in time, more people would realise the importance of social entrepreneurship in developing countries, understand why students and volunteers choose to dedicate their time to these initiatives, and consequently be more willing to invest capital into programs like ours, so that our teams in 2013, 2014, and 2015 will have better luck securing the necessary funds to expand the Sauder Africa Initiative.