Turning the youth into SMEs

NDAMA NAKASHOLE - The young minds who are Namibia’s future should have the impetus to venture into business in their areas of expertise in order to ultimately offer high-quality goods and services, an expert has said.At the Bank of Namibia’s (BoN) annual symposium last week, Alpheas Shindi, a competence-based education and training expert, said existing SMEs should increase their support of Vocational Education Training (VET) through job attachments and employment. In his presentation titled ‘Promoting VET in SMEs in Namibia’, Shindi highlighted the “challenges, hurdles and obstacles” preventing the achievement of intended goals.The challenges include resources, both financial and human. Some hurdles are the regulatory framework in the form of acts, policies, instruments and even institutional directives. Some obstacles are attitudinal on the part of personnel, and these tend to dog many public institutions, he said. “Financial resource limitations continue to be identified by aspiring young businessmen and women,” he added.According to him, start-up capital is one of the vital ingredients for setting up a business. FosteringHe said if SMEs are the engine that drives economies, there has to be visible attention to fostering and supporting SME establishment.“There are few banking institutions which have come forward with packages to assist business start-up, although the procedures to access the loans are cumbersome, thereby frustrating the efforts of potential entrepreneurs,” he said.Among other things, banks require collateral for loans between N$100 000 and N$5 million. They require applicants to provide copies of municipal bills and lease agreements, thereby making the assumption that one owns a house or is renting accommodation.“The Development Bank of Namibia has produced brochures for assisting SMEs to set up business as well as access loans,” he said.“Accessing of loans is not an easy process as there are some requirements to be met. The requirements include, and are not limited to, company information, management plans, financial information, operations, economic and development impact.”He said the required financial information is quite detailed, as it includes balance sheets, cash-flow and financial projections, budgets and a certificate of good standing from the Receiver of Revenue.Business modelsAnother challenge is that VTCs and COSDECs are failing to produce good business models for aspiring entrepreneurs. If all these regulatory, resource and attitudinal obstacles were removed, Namibia would have a bright future in realising its visions and goals, he said.“The resources which are in abundance should be taken advantage of and as a nation, we should reduce coming up with excuses, complaining and finger pointing and rather look for solutions to our challenges. The sun which melts ice is the same sun which hardens bricks,” he said.

Turning the youth into SMEs

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Republikein 2025-04-21

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Turning the youth into SMEs

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