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Leonard Ncube in Victoria Falls
GLOBAL Entrepreneurship Africa, a local organisation has partnered with Start-Up Africa to develop programmes targeting young people to capacitate them with entrepreneurial skills to become job creators.

This is in line with the Second Republic’s drive to address unemployment challenges by churning out graduates who are job creators as opposed to jobseekers.

Global Entrepreneurship Africa founder Mrs Gillian Kudzai Munyanyi, who is also co-founder and operations director of Gifts & More, believes young people should be given an opportunity to develop their talent and skills even if they don’t excel academically.

Mrs Munyanyi, a youth from Harare partnered with United States-based Start-Up Africa to host the African Youth Forum, which culminated in the Association of Technical Universities and Polytechnics in Africa (Atupa) international conference in Victoria Falls recently where focus was on the Technical and

Vocational Education and Training (TVET) education.

The partnership targets to capacitate 10 million young people with TVET and entrepreneurial skills on the continent.

Gifts & More was formed in 2010 as a promotional and events planning company.

“I partnered with Start-Up Africa through Global Entrepreneurship Africa whose vision is to build business tourism and making local people meet international investors as well as encourage young entrepreneurs to meet other youths from other countries.

“We met with Start-Up Africa in 2017 when we went for a business tourism awareness conference and our long-term plan is to develop youths in TVET. We want to have exchange programmes and there will be more of such TVET events,” said Mrs Munyanyi.

She said with support, young people can create jobs and contribute to the growth of the economy.
Mrs Munyanyi said she is grateful to her mother Mrs Miriam Kaodza who inspired her to venture into business.

“I wasn’t an A class student but my mother stood by me because she realised, I was more of a practical child and helped me take advantage of the skills. I am grateful to her because she believed in me as an average child and taught me how to do business when she left her formal job to hustle. I also thank my husband Mr Denford Munyanyi for supporting me.

“My advice to youths is that there is nothing they cannot do as long they put their minds to it,” she said.
TVET is key in achieving Sustainable Development Goals particularly SDG 4.

Start-Up Africa is a non-profit making organisation that was started to champion youth issues and address unemployment challenges.

Its founder and chief executive Mr Erastus Mongare said partnering a local organisation will help domesticate a lot of activities for the benefit of local youths.

“We do these activities through entrepreneurship and innovation programmes after realisation that we have millions of young people graduating from colleges every year but there are no formal jobs to absorb them.

“For this reason, we created a platform where we are teaching young people entrepreneurship and innovation as a way to assist them to create jobs. We started in Kenya but beyond that we have programmes for TVET students which we launched in 2019 in nine countries and this year we brought the programme to Zimbabwe,” he said.

Start-Up Africa has been carrying out such programmes since 2013 in Kenya where the Africa office is located and a high school entrepreneurship programme is underway.

More than 1 250 high schools have participated in Kenya alone and the target is to reach more than 10 000.

The programme has been replicated in Tanzania and Uganda and Zimbabwe will be next through partnership with Global Entrepreneurship Africa.

“As an organisation we made a bold undertaking to impact the lives of 10 million students in Africa through job creation skills by 2030. What we are doing in Zimbabwe is contributing towards that goal of assisting 10 million youths by the year 2030 and we are working with different countries and institutions to achieve this. Our hope is that of those 10 million, one million of them will turn up to be start-ups thereby creating enterprises,” said Mr Mongare.

This is the first time Zimbabwe participated in the programme and this dovetails with the country’s Vision of an upper middle-income economy by 2030.

Students from various TVET institutions showcased various project proposals and Mr Mongare said he was impressed by the innovations in healthcare, ICT, transport, infrastructure, agriculture, water and education.

The partnership will see local students participating at global TVET competitions every year.

Mr Mongare said working with local people who understand the geography and culture helps to make an impact and will benefit the country as it works to solve challenges using research-based solutions from TVET institutions.