My hub in Thohoyandou is almost live. This is the culmination of two years of sacrifice. The hub will be FREE for the community. On the hub we will teach fully accredited courses by University of Pretoria & entrepreneurs will get a FREE work space, state of the art boardrooms, access to mentoring and business tools for accounting, CRM and many others.
I chose Thohoyandou because the rural & peri-urban areas of our continent are the most populated but remain underserved. Opening a hub in the cities is EASY. Go to the people. That’s where the access, knowledge, training and mentorship is needed.
Why Thohoyandou? When we chose the area the stats from StatsSA were harrowing:
- Only 5.3% of the population has a higher education qualification. This includes FET colleges.
- Over 60% of the settlements are on tribal or traditional land. Over 65% of the citizens have no access to internet.
- Over 50% of the citizens, they don’t have more than a primary schooling level of education
The populations is a classical honeycomb shape which means the majority of the population is youth between 15 years old and 29 years old.
I realized something: South Africa (and Africa broadly) doesn’t need more entrepreneurs. Like many I was completely wrong. We need more SKILLS. A skills revolution will mean youth will be able to create their own jobs & provide for their families. I will be posting more about the site as we prepare to go live. Follow my posts on #IncludeTheExcluded
