BDC empowers youth entrepreneurs

Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) has partnered with the African Youth Entrepreneurs Summit (AYES) which aims to bring together young African entrepreneurs under one roof to share their business acumen and foster partnerships. 

This year the AYES summit was held at Travel Lodge on Thursday under the theme; “Disruptive Innovation in Today’s Versatile Business Jungle” to celebrate and develop young sharp minds that are driving African countries to economic diversity. The summit, which is in its second year following its launch in 2018, is an annual event that intends to have a combined voice and representation to connect youth owned business ideas and reinforce the entrepreneurial desires of young African entrepreneurs.

As a leading investment arm of government, BDC took the opportunity to sponsor AYES’s looking at its mandate as the “Leading provider of information in Innovation, Trading, Investments and entrepreneurial basics” because the Corporation aspires to cultivate Botswana entrepreneurial space to support its own mandate of developing the commercial and industrial sectors in Botswana. BDC and AYES’ partnership will also support a BDC CSI project where young entrepreneurs will be supported financially and mentored according to the viability of their pitched business ideas.

Boitshwarelo Lebang, BDC Head- Corporate Affairs and Strategy addressed the audience on the subject of “The Future of Global Finance; Where trends are leading to in the Financial Services and Sector”. She said in a nutshell, “Inclusion through the use of Technology” is the future of the Industry. “FinTech is the future, with the likes of Crowd-funding, B2B funding etc,” she said. She also shared information on “Sectors that Investors are Hungry for” which she said include: Technology, Healthcare, Energy, and Retail. 

Modise Mokone, BDC investment principal, spoke on the BDC funding model as well as educated the entrepreneurs on the importance of scalability in business to compete globally.