A Cape Town student and winner of a prestigious South African competition is unapologetically honest about the need for attitude change amongst South African entrepreneurs, whom he observes “are not determined enough to succeed”.
The MBA student from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB), Bathabile Mpofu, says: “Entrepreneurship is very important for economic growth but people need to understand how to use the knowledge they have.”
Giving the example of the TOTAL competition, for which 75,000 tried to enter but only 24,000 entries were received, Mpofu wonders: “Why did over 50,000 people not finish the entry form?” According to Mpofu, entrants had to provide detailed information about their ideas and needed to think carefully about why they were entering.
Talking from her experience, Mpofu says education is vital to entrepreneurs and believes that small businesses hold up some of the largest economies in the world.
An MBA student from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB), Bathabile Mpofu, has beaten 24,000 entrants from around the country to walk away with R600,000 prize money and top honours in the 2016 TOTAL Startupper of the Year competition.
The winner was announced at the end of March and Mpofu was delighted that her project, Nkazimulo Applied Sciences, won top honours. “This was just what we were waiting for,” she said then.
Nkazimulo Applied Sciences delivers 52 physical science-related experiments for use by high school learners. Packaged in one box for just R699, it offers a fun experiment per week for the whole year. The goal of the project is to get children interested in science and to help them see how science works practically, by teaching them how to make soap or plastic or demonstrating for instance, how fireflies create their light.
Information credits: adapted for Transform SA Online from a press release from the University of Cape Town Business School
