Entrepreneur Says He Owes It All to LEA
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday November 2, 2015 18:00
After running the supermarket for over a decade, Jele opened up a filling station after identifying a gap in the fuel supply business along the Francistown and Nata road.
According to Jele, he managed to get assistance from the Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) in 2008, which helped him turn around the business by engaging a consultant to coordinate their operations and track their performance.
“It is through LEA’s interventions that the business grew and expanded to include a fuel service station and a convenience store.
Before approaching the authority, I had a staff complement of 16, and now I have employed 35 more as my business expanded,” testifies Jele in the LEA 2014-2015 annual report.
He added that LEA assisted him develop a business plan to seek funds for expansion of the filling station from Citizen Enterprise Development Authority (CEDA).
Currently his business, Treetop Investments, is the sole supplier of fuel in Dukwi with its clients being mostly tourists, government and private entities such as Mowana mine. LEA also organised and trained all their employees on customer care. Other interventions offered to the client included principles of marketing, technology audit, technology gap analysis, and enterprise monitoring and coaching.
“Through the assistance of the authority, we were able to recruit an accounts officer as well as to separate the books of accounts for each of the components of the business to allow better performance training and management of each entity,” he said.
Monitoring of the business covered setting up of a business operating model, governance and management system, human resources management and development system, financial management and control system, records keeping, management and records archiving system and investment strategy and implementation plan.
According to the 2014-2015 report, LEA has created 1,445 jobs against a target of 667 in which 24,426 aspiring entrepreneurs attended their workshops across the country. They also approved 20 business plans by different financing institutions at the tune of P27.3 million.
Last year LEA embarked on a new three-year strategy ‘2014 to 2017’ where the authority shifted its focus from the initial four agricultural sub-sectors of dairy, leather, horticulture and piggery by committing to assist all sectors in the SMME environment.