WOMEN WHO TRAINED ON PRACTICAL BUSINESS SKILLS THAT EQUIP THEM TO IMPROVE THEIR ENTREPRENEURSHIP POSE FOR A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY IN ZANZIBAR.
ZANZAIBR Technology and Business Incubator centre, which is under the support of the Isles’ Ministry of Empowerment, Social Welfare, Youth, Women and Children Development has said that it has trained more than 600 youths in employability skills since it was set up last year.
Speaking in an interview with ‘The Guardian’ in Dar es Salaam at the weekend shortly after closing w workshop on entrepreneurship, Zanzibar Technology and Business Incubator’s expert for Entrepreneurship Development Dr Rajeev Aggarwal said entrepreneurship development in the isles is very low, that’s why they decided to set up an incubator to help the people.
Aggarwal also said that their role is to see that many youth in the country especially in Zanzibar get technical skills that would change their mindsets from being job seekers to job creators.
“We want youth in the country to be job creators and not job seekers. We carried out a survey and found out that most of the students in universities and colleges in Zanzibar have the vision of becoming employed and not creating their own jobs,” he said.
He added: “One way of getting skilled labourers in the country is by providing youth with technical and vocational training. Technical and vocational training are a necessary ingredient towards poverty reduction as they provide opportunity for self employment”.
For his part, Zanzibar Technology and Business Incubator manager Said Seif said the ultimate goal of the centre is to enable participants develop their own businesses and small scale companies.
Meanwhile, Zanzibar Technology and Business Incubator with the partnership of Linking African Market and Partnerships (LAMP) have trained more than 30 small women entrepreneurs in Dar es Salaam on practical business skills that would equip them to improve entrepreneurship.
LAMP’s senior partner, Sukanja Borgmann, said women in Tanzania need powerful knowledge on entrepreneurship to help them improve their ventures so they could compete with their foreign counterparts.
Borgmann also said that women in the country have to form a strong business network that would assist them in expanding their businesses through assisting each other.
She also urged small women entrepreneurs in the country to prepare good packages for their products capable of competing with other products in the market.
For his part, Linking African Market and Partnerships advisor Joseph Massinda admitted that accessing finance for empowering small women entrepreneurs is the biggest challenge that needs to be addressed.
Massinda added: “Accessing good technology is also a problem that many small women entrepreneurs are facing. There is a need to make sure that those small scale women entrepreneurs are supported in finance and technology to make them compete in the market.”
He also said that Tanzanian entrepreneurs are supposed to produce quality products so as to cater for the growing larger regional markets of EAC as well as that of SADC.
However, In January 2016, the Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan launched the Zanzibar Technology Business Incubation Centre (ZTBIC) located and hosted at Karume Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) as part of commemorating the 52nd anniversary of the Zanzibar Revolution.
The centre received 206m/- in financial support from the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Cotech) to support the implementation of the incubation project to achieve the outlined objectives.
/IPPMEDIA.
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