The minister of finance and public enterprises, Iipumbu Shiimi, says Namibia has no entrepreneurship culture, and many young people would rather work for the government.
He said this during the Development Bank of Namibia’s Good Business Awards in Windhoek yesterday.
Shiimi said research was done on the entrepreneurship culture in Namibia and the result showed there is none.
“When the research was conducted, we asked young people, especially graduates, what they would like to do, and many of them want to either work for the government or for big established companies,” he said.
He said the Good Business Awards are a good way of promoting an entrepreneurship culture, since a country without entrepreneurs is like an army without soldiers.
DBN chief executive John Steytler said the bank’s aim is to promote a culture of entrepreneurship.
“I know that sometimes people say the development bank should give grants, but that is not financially sustainable,” he said.
He said being a responsible lender is the only way to foster economic development, and that means being financially sustainable.
The Good Business Awards are hosted by the DBN, and have two categories – one for small and medium enterprises (SME) and one for large enterprises.
On Tuesday Brand Plan won the SME award, while Nampharm walked away with the large enterprise category award.
The bank gave the winners N$400 000.
Collin Bester, the winner of the SME category, said although Namibia has been experiencing some inflation, the key to staying afloat is being able to keep up with trends.
He said this in an interview with Desert Radio yesterday.
“I started this business seven years ago, and today we employ about 100 people. But this was after another small business I had, which eventually closed because it was not doing well.
“Overall every business will face challenges, but you need to keep up with the trends and be able to diversify,” Bester said.
Brand Plan is a Namibian branding and signage manufacturing company.
Banda Shilimela, the owner of Shilimela Security Services, said investors should refrain from giving SMEs too much money “as this would create more problems for that start-up”.
“If you give an SME, which has never handled N$100 000, N$3 million, you would cause a lot of damage, because that person would start thinking he or she is a millionaire, and start spending money and being wasteful,” he said.
Shilimela said the journey of an entrepreneur is not an easy one, and people should be willing to take risks, because only then would they have returns.
“As an entrepreneur, if you do not fall, you would never know how to lift yourself up,’’ he said.
Shilimela said he owns 70 businesses in and outside of Namibia.
The awards were suspended in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid-19.
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