A whole new ecosystem
One of my biggest dreams, before I got consumed by the corporate jungle, was to create a true entrepreneurial ecosystem, think of it as a marketplace where traders with different backgrounds meet to solve problems that affect their immediate spaces.
The word consortium means a group of companies, this clearly shows where my headspace was.
I was always going to face challenges realizing this dream. South Africa 🇿🇦 as a country is not a friendly place for nurturing and amplifying dreams and ideas.
The other biggest bottleneck I encountered was fear, I learnt that people can talk the talk but very few can walk the walk. South African youth are happy to sit in offices and receive a salary for doing a job that doesn’t excite them nor speak to who they are.
Granted, not everyone is gonna be an entrepreneur, we respect that. I do however still feel we are sold dreams, the dream of going to school so we can be consumed back into the system that has driven many before us into debt.
I don’t need to be told this, I’ve got the first-hand experience. South African youth are by far the most creative and innovative in the world, South African youth are geniuses but they are contained and brainwashed. We know what is wrong, we know the system is corrupt and was not created to liberate us but we are not brave enough to break free.
I imagine a completely new system, a system that will create funding for budding entrepreneurs because no one else understands these dreams and ideas better than us. An ecosystem that will create jobs of the future, the type of jobs that will resonate with South African youth.
A new way of doing insurance, a fair and efficient way of doing home loans and car finance, by the way, why are we not manufacturing our cars anyway? This will drive down costs and increase demand. Why do we have to spend our entire working lives trying to pay off a bond? The whole financing model needs to change, while it needs to remain financially viable, it needs not to enslave people, it needs to work for the people. Finance over 20/30 years at a ridiculously high-interest rate in the name of making it affordable? Hogwash. I do imagine a whole new way of transportation, South Africa is a country rich in natural minerals. Why do we send gold, diamonds 💎 etc abroad then have them resold to us? Something is wrong here, imagine an ecosystem that will correct these anomalies!
We could come together as youth and create a whole new ecosystem. Cut and polish our diamonds here. Create an insurance model that’s truly ours, rethink funding and financing. We honestly can do all this, but I’ve noticed that we all care about our survival but history will expose how much we missed an opportunity to fix and create a better future for our children!
By Success Ngobeni
