A Rhodes SMME (Small, Medium & Micro Enterprise) initiative, in partnership with the Makana Municipality and the National Arts Festival, will help boost local entrepreneurs and small businesses by giving the historically disadvantaged communities the opportunity to benefit from having the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

Rhodes is represented on the project by the Rhodes Investec Business School (RIBS), and the University based Centre for Entrepreneurship and its Community Engagement Office. Riana Meiring, responsible for Local Economic Development in Makana, is representing the Municipality, with Tony Lankaster involved in his capacity as CEO of the Festival and Ismail Mahomed, Festival Director.

The aim of the initiative, called the Innovation Hub, is to provide a range of goods and services to Festival visitors, but RIBS will also be helping entrepreneurs manage their small businesses sustainably.

Interested local entrepreneurs were recently briefed on the initiative at a workshop held at the City Hall on 22 April. Participants were requested to submit their business ideas to the Municipality, outlining how they would execute these, what support they would need, what the impact would be in terms of job creation, etc.

It was stressed that this was not intended to be an onerous process – it could be handwritten and grammar and punctuation were not taken into account – the main thing to convey was the “Big Idea”.

These submissions were sifted through by a panel consisting of RIBS, Makana Municipality, the Centre for Entrepreneurship and the Festival office, and six entrepreneurs were selected for training by RIBS.

There will be five training sessions and these will take place at the Business School from 5 to 7pm on Thursday evenings, commencing 20 May. The focus will not only be on how to start a small business, but how to manage it sustainably.

The material for this training has been developed by Macdonald Kanyangale, a PhD student in the Business School, who has previous experience of this nature in Malawi. Professor Owen Skae will join Kanyangale as a facilitator and there will also be input from the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Standard Bank.

A number of other support mechanisms are being put into place for these entrepreneurs. They will have back-office support at RIBS during the Festival, with student volunteers from the Community Engagement office providing services such as a booking facility, while seed funding is being provided by the Municipality and Festival to kick-start the small businesses.

The entrepreneurs are also being given the opportunity to network, e.g. to attend the RIBS Business Forum being addressed by Michelle Constant of BASA.