The Black Management Forum (BMF) hosted its inaugural entrepreneurship summit at the Standard Bank Incubator in Rosebank on Saturday. The event’s theme was “understanding the South African entrepreneurial landscape”. The summit attracted entrepreneurs from all over the province who came to listen to the different speakers featured in the line-up.
Mncane Mthunzi, the BMF’s president gave the welcoming address where he lamented the pace of transformation in South Africa. Mthunzi said while transformation is taking place, it is not at a pace the BMF believed it should be. “Statistics SA has informed us that the average household income for a white family is over five times higher than that of a black household,” he said.
The BMF realized the need to setup an entrepreneurship desk after its members gave it a mandate to look into challenges faced by small business owners. The forum said summits of this kind should serve as a platform where companies give SMME’s information on how to get into supply chain instead of telling them about their successes.
Mthunzi said the time for talking is over and it was now time to produce tangible results. “The policies in this country are farfetched and not in line with what is happening on the ground,” he said.
A delegate by the name of Awande Dlamini, marketing manager at Independent Media Gauteng region, said she has been a member of the BMF for only 3 months having joined in Cape Town before becoming a member of the Gauteng chapter after relocating to the economic hub a month ago. “I expected to gain knowledge from the speakers because it is my ambition to venture into entrepreneur in the near future and that requires the right skills to operate effectively,” she said.
A discussion platform was made available to delegates where they asked panelists questions on overcoming adversity and thriving in a hostile business environment. The first panel discussion featured Hlengiwe Zondo the CEO of African Reflections Group and Jayshree Naidoo the Standard Bank Incubator Head. Naidoo said her company was prioritizing working with black-owned companies and has seen a reduction in white-owned companies in their supply chain. “We are engaging with black entrepreneurs on a transformational point of view,” she said.