Tshwane gets smart

By Staff Writer for Innovation Hub

Johannesburg, 13 Jun 2005

The Innovation Hub is grooming a group of unemployed tertiary graduates as hi-tech entrepreneurs who are expected to use their skills for the benefit of the City of Tshwane.

The group is participating in the SmartCity Project, with training focused on life skills, project management, entrepreneurship and the development of technical skills with an emphasis on SMS technology.

"Grooming young black entrepreneurs to actively participate in the hi-tech sector is important to help increase the skills pools in this vitally important domain," says Tsietsi Maleho, corporate affairs manager at The Innovation Hub.

"The ultimate goal of the project is to establish a company that can apply SMS technology to provide the Tshwane Municipality with messaging services and billing alerts, which will greatly enhance its ability to communicate with residents regarding issues that affect them."

The training, which began in March, is scheduled to run for three months and will be followed by a stringent selection process to identify the students that will take the start-up company into the pre-incubation programme at the Hub's Maxum Business Incubator.

Office space and a dedicated mentor both form part of the pre-incubation process to support the young entrepreneurs in growing their business, and this phase will be sponsored by the Finnish Embassy, with the intention of linking up with a Finnish company that provides a similar service.

According to Marcia Glenn, senior advisor of the Africa Regional Urban Programmes at USAID, one of the other sponsors, the project is addressing the problem of unemployment and encouraging the spirit of entrepreneurship, while enabling the students to interact and share ideas with the tenants at Maxum.

"This project is an opportunity for young people to grow and make something of themselves. We are privileged to be the first group in the project and are determined to make it a success," says Jay-Jay Tswai, one of the students in the project.