SMES WIN E50 000 AFTER LISTENING TO RADIO

MBABANE - It has never been easier for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to get business funding.

This comes after five SMEs won themselves seed capital worth E50 000, E10 000 each by simply following the MTN-SEDCO CijaNgebhizinisi radio programme which aired for 18 weeks on Eswatini Broadcasting Information Services (EBIS).
The aim of the programme was to support upcoming enterprises with an assortment of skills, business knowledge and information.

To mark the official culmination of the programme, the project partners, SEDCO and MTN Foundation handed the seed capital to the five best businesses which emerged winners of the competition.
The event was held yesterday at SEDCO head offices in Mbabane.

To qualify for the seed capital, they were expected to tune in on EBIS each week, listen to the programme and take note of buzzwords. Thereafter, through a form, they used those buzzwords as entry to the competition. From the pool of entries, 22 businesses were then selected and were visited by the competition judges. The best five businesses were found to have been professionally running their businesses. They were diligently keeping records and complying to health and safety standards among other things. However, all 22 businesses received business training.

The best five winners were congratulated by Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade Director of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Mluleki Dlamini, SEDCO Managing Director Dorrington Matiwane, and MTN Eswatini Acting Chief Executive Officer Sibusiso Nhleko.

Initiative

Matiwane said the programme was part of SEDCO’s initiative, in line with their new strategic plan, to create a sustainable and modern SME sector.
He said they believed that this intervention would improve the current set of circumstances of the SME sector, based on the worrying findings of the FinScope 2017 MSME survey.
According to the survey, only 11 per cent of SMEs reported to have attended formal business training. While about 40 per cent of them reported to have taught themselves how to run their businesses, and 58 per cent were not keeping records.
“We discovered that the radio is the most effective tool and we are grateful to MTN Eswatini for endorsing the programme. We can never succeed alone, that is why we are proud of our partnership with MTN Eswatini,” he said.

The programme was aired in SiSwati. Matiwane said this was because they believed that the local dialect could also include marginalised groups.
“This was evident from the overwhelming response that we experienced through our different feedback channels including our WhatsApp number, walk-ins, and calls.”

MTN Eswatini Acting Chief Executive Officer Sibusiso Nhleko said MTN Foundation supported this initiative because it was consistent with one of its pillars – youth enterprise development.
“MTN Foundation is grateful for the positive response from upcoming entrepreneurs which was seen throughout the implementation of this project,” he said.
He said their dream is to ensure that everybody participates actively in driving the economy.

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