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Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa this week called for entrepreneurship to be included in the basic education school curriculum in order to create greater prosperity.
Delivering the opening address of the Global Entrepreneurship Congress at Sandton Convention Centre, Ramaphosa, who made a fortune as a businessman, said the inclusion into the curriculum would ensure success stories such as Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba.
Mashaba also got rich from business before turning to politics.
“There is much more we can do, entrepreneurship must be part of the school curriculum ... So that young people must from an early age be encouraged to be problem solvers,” Ramaphosa said, adding that the inclusion would also ensure more job creators, rather than job seekers, were developed and that entrepreneurship would be seen a viable career option.
Addressing an audience that included delegates from over 170 countries, several countries’ ministers, Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu, Mashaba and Telkom chairperson Jabu Mabuza as well as hundreds of investors and entrepreneurs, Ramaphosa said even though there wasn’t such a thing as an ideal entrepreneur, all of them still needed the basics to thrive.
During the address, Ramaphosa told young entrepreneurs that the event should assist them in eventually signing business contracts with contacts made during the four-day conference.
He said digital disruption was the ideal theme because the concept had become the cornerstone of economies worldwide.
Jonathan Ortman, president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network and Chairperson of GEC, said the event being hosted in Africa for the first was an overdue development.
“It is Africa’s time, one can’t avoid that. Even throughout the world this event has always had a strong participation from Africa especially in the last one held in Moscow in 2012,” Ortman said.
The conference included numerous discussions on various aspects on businesses, digital revolution, the lagging behind of laws after technology and accessing “Angel Investors”.
