Business mentorship programme comes alive
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday June 16, 2014 06:59
Next month’s workshop marks the first in the Tokafala programme, a six-month old partnership between government, Anglo American, De Beers and Debswana aimed at promoting economic development and employment creation through SMME support.
Tokafala offers advisory support, personalised business mentoring, market access assistance and linkages to existing government programmes. In future, the programme will provide financing to a select group of SMMEs parallel to mentoring and advisory support to ensure business success.
Last week, Tokafala Hub Manager, Victor Mong-gae, told Business Monitor that the July 28 training workshop is open to all budding businesses and participation is free of charge.
“This will be followed by subsequent workshops on August 19, September 23 and October 21,” he said.
“All SMMEs are invited because the workshops will be followed by one on one sessions with an experienced mentor to help the entrepreneur think through how the lessons learnt apply to their own business.”
Topics to be covered at the workshops include the best growth opportunities for a business, business management through finances, market access, and how to bring it all together into a comprehensive and consistent growth strategy.
“We chose these topics based on what we gathered during our pilot project. We realised that many companies share almost the same challenges of market access penetration, finance management problems, records management skills as well as business management skills. “These really hinder their productivity,” said Mong-gae, adding that in today’s market place, success often depends on the ability to manage and strategise for growth.
Currently the Tokafala programme has 14 companies under its pilot mentorship, which are engaged in manufacturing, transportation, recycling, advertising, catering, messenger service as well as Information Communications Technology (ICT).
Mong-gae said Tokafala will start offering small-scale loans to select entrepreneurs from the third quarter of the year.
The Hub manager said the selection criteria for the Tokafala programme was restricted to citizen-owned companies whose managers are involved in the day-to-day running of the business. For small businesses their annual turnover should be between P100,000 and P5 million, while that for micro-enterprises should be less than P100,000, and between P5 and P20 million for medium-scale enterprises.
“Of course we have rejected some businesses based on failure of our interviews and those who just came in and demanded financial injection,” he explained. “We need determined, passionate and motivated individuals because one goes through a vigorous evaluation process and diagnostic interviews.”
The Tokafalo Enterprise Development Programme was launched in November last year but fully became operational in January 2014. Tokafala is currently located in Gaborone and is scheduled to open another hub in Francistown as part of initiatives to reach out to clientele. The programme builds on Anglo American’s extensive experience and successes in enterprise development.
Mong-gae explained that Tokafala also leverages on existing initiatives such as the poverty eradication programme, Economic Diversification Drive, Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), Botswana Confederation of Commerce Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM), Citizen Development Enterprise (CDE) as well as banks.
“We also negotiate with our partners on behalf of our clients to help them achieve their dreams,” he said.