Eskom rewards young entrepreneurs

The awards were held at the Sci-Bono Discovery centre in Newtown, where more than 80 pupils gathered to find out who would be named the overall winners of the Enterprise Education Competition.

Simama Ranta, managed by non-profit organisation, the Education With Enterprise Trust, is aimed at highlighting the variety of comprehensive, high-quality entrepreneurship projects in South Africa’s schools and reward them for their good work.

Wits university accounting graduate, motivational speaker and social entrepreneur, Simon Mtsuki emceed the event and shared some of his wisdom with the young aspiring entrepreneurs.

“Africa’s most powerful resource is its young ones… so the resource we ought to be looking at, nurturing and developing is our young people because our young ones will have a long lasting impact on the continent’s economy,” he motivated.

Haylene Liberty-Nel, Eskom development foundation CEO said, “The goal of this national programme is to showcase a variety of business models to South African learners and offer them comprehensive, quality entrepreneurship education.

“The school programme promotes the South African government’s economic development agenda and aims to stimulate economic growth by encouraging learners to consider entrepreneurship as a career choice – and become creators of jobs rather than only job seekers. The clubs that have participated this year show that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well among South Africa’s youth.”

The Boschfontein Youth Club of Mbambiso High School in Mpumalanga walked away as the winners on the night with a cheque for R100 000 to invest in their project.

The club was among 27 finalist schools, three from each province, that were competing for the overall national title.

However, no one walked away empty handed as each provincial winning school received R50 000, the provincial runners-up received R25 000 and the provincial second runners-up each received R10 000.