A new Global Business School of Entrepreneurship that will focus on entrepreneurial training and development has been launched officially at the SADC Heads of State Summit that took place in August in Johannesburg. The school will be trading as “The Global Business School of Entrepreneurship” (GBSE) and will, as a start, focus on the 14 SADC countries, the African Continent and other developing countries.

During his speech at the Summit, Sipho Mseleku, Chief Executive Officer of The Association of SADC Chambers of Commerce and Industries (ASCCI) and GBSE President and Chairman, said: “Most economies around the world are built on SMEs. SMEs contribute immensely to public finance and have an opportunity to grow to regional and global businesses. They allow for the development of innovative and creative ideas and have the ability to turn themselves into viable and sustainable businesses.”

“The challenge however is that government and private sector invest very little to developing the SME sector and yet the job creation challenges and poverty eradication lies squarely in the investments we make in creating entrepreneurs”, he said.

Mr. Mseleku stressed that our Region and our continent needs to move away from social welfare and a ‘dependency syndrome’ and use the resources we have to create viable businesses which will guarantee the creation of sustainable jobs.

With the above in mind, ASCCI, and its global partners has launched the Global Business School of Entrepreneurship, and is designed to address the shortage of entrepreneurial skills that the region and the African continent face. It is known that most business people become entrepreneurs by default, not because they have been deliberately taught entrepreneurship as a career at school. In most of the SADC countries the school system, including tertiary education, does not prepare people to be entrepreneurs, business people, creators of wealth and or creators of jobs. They train them to be job seekers and administrators of other people’s businesses.

GBSE has formed alliances with a number of organisations, such as the Wits Business School, Corporate Governance Framework Research Institute (CGF), Proudly SA, Reality Check and others.