The Sunday Mail
Trade Focus
Allan Majuru
ZimTrade — the national trade development and promotion organisation —recently launched a youth incubation programme that is expected to increase participation of young people in growing Zimbabwe’s exports.
This programme, themed “Eagle’s Nest”, is grounded on the understanding that the youth are the custodians of our future trade.
This then calls for sustainable trade and economic development or requires specific approaches to include marginalised groups, particularly young people.
This initiative also anchors on the recognition by the National Youth Policy that the participation of young people in economic activities “provides sustenance and sustainable livelihood to the majority of them”.
It is important to note that this programme was initiated during the engagements between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Dr Sibusiso Moyo and exporters last year in Bulawayo.
At that forum, a young entrepreneur asked the minister to create a programme that empowered the youths to take part in exports and hence the launch of the incubation programme.
Worldwide, where young people are given various forms of support, they are able to be creative and generate ideas that lead to the creation of global businesses.
African figures such as South Africa’s Easy Solar founder, Paul Kihiko, and Zimbabwe’s own Simba Muriro are clear success stories that demonstrate the potential of young people in developing economies.
Undoubtedly, young people are an important demography in the global economy and according to the United Nations, Africa has the fastest growing youth population in the world, with approximately 60 percent of its population under the age of 24.
Back home, there is a growing realisation that young people are central to the economy and a special focus on youths will go a long way in achieving the country’s target of growing exports by 10 percent every year until 2023.
As such, it is becoming clear that there is a need to come up with key programmes that will enhance youth contribution to key national economic activities, amongst them exports.
This contribution can easily be achieved by helping young people transform their creative ideas into successful business plans.
But how best can young people be assisted to grow exports?
One of the areas that require urgent attention is capacity building, which will create more benefits, including direct and indirect job creation and the development of human capital and new skills.
A more sustainable approach is to ensure that the youth are well knowledgeable on business strategies, human management skills as well as financial literacy.
Arguably, most young people who are business owners are not well versed in key skills such as strategy development, creative design and use of technology to develop their export products and position themselves strategically in the global market.
Thus, capacity building can turn youth-led businesses into export businesses, creating employment opportunities and earning the country foreign currency.
The recently launched programme, Eagles Nest, is expected to bridge the knowledge gap by bringing together different stakeholders to support and nurture youth-led businesses across Zimbabwe into viable export ready companies.
The programme will involve some of the successful business people mentoring leaders in selected businesses and providing practical solutions that will aid in navigating some of the difficult business terrain.
ZimTrade’s partners such as Netherlads-based PUM and SES of Germany, which are senior expert organisations, are expected to offer support to selected entrepreneurs, by providing expert advice to businesses that will make youth-owned businesses competitive.
Such expert advice will include appropriate international certification, ways to improve their product — from design to packaging stage — and on needs basis.
It will also touch on different upgraded machinery to ensure their product meets international standards as well as digital marketing.
Further to this, organisations such as ZIMRA will also offer insight on the different cost-cutting benefits that businesses can take advantage of such as registering under trade agreements and many more.
A quick scan of youth-owned businesses reveals that some of them are not formally registered, regardless of the many years they have spent operating.
Working with some key national institutions will therefore ease the registration process and ensure that more youth-led businesses are formalised.
After formalising, youth-owned businesses are thus expected to have access to bigger markets and financing, which remains a major challenge for small businesses. Other stakeholders expected to come on board the Eagle’s Nest programme are local banks and financing institutions, who will avail funding facilities tailored for youth-led SMEs.
Conventional funding options often require collateral, making it difficult for young people to get funding, thus by focusing on selected viable businesses, banks will provide financial literacy that will make investment worthwhile.
One critical component of the Eagle’s Nest Programme is support to youth-owned business to reach export markets by promoting their products and services in foreign countries.
The programme has been tailored along the lines of a competition, where 10 out of 100 applicants will be chosen to participate in various training and interventions to capacitate them for the export markets.
The winner will get a chance to receive support from ZimTrade to attend trade fairs in ideal markets specific to their products.
This means they will be able to attend key trade promotional events where they will meet international buyers, understand market needs and strike orders.
For those that do not make it to international exhibitions, they will be included in inward buyer missions, where ZimTrade will facilitate foreign buyers to visit Zimbabwe to tour factories and companies, as well as meet with prospective suppliers.
This way, youth-led businesses that would’ve applied for the programme will benefit and be able to create a strong presence on the export market.
Another area of intervention that is required to strengthen competitiveness of youth-owned businesses is information access.
Reliable and up-to-date information is central in the development of youth-led businesses and there is a need to keep them informed on growing global trends.
The emergence of e-commerce has given opportunities for youth-led businesses to participate and survive global value chains as it is now easy for local businesses to take their products to the world through the internet.
Regrettably, most youth-led businesses in Zimbabwe do not have a strong online presence.
Thus, Eagle’s Nest programme will ensure that youth-led businesses develop strong marketing strategies that ride on creative use of modern technologies to reach a wider market in other countries.
