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This project is about assisting local street vendors to improve their enterprises in partnership with various industries. The project will provide them with the necessary support to help grow their businesses and improve their working environment. This will manifest in the form of skills development, marketing and branding, product improvements, tools, machinery and equipment
Aims: Introduce a mindset shift for South African informal, small and micro-enterprises/cooperatives to grow and run vibrant businesses through the following interventions:
• Improve the entrepreneurial skills of informal traders
• Provide start-up and technical skills training
The Midlands Entrepreneurship Centre, under its community engagement office, established the informal traders’ programme to address the challenges of a lack of access to training, finance, banking institutions, land and property, and excessive government regulations. The second set of challenges, which is more infrastructural, includes a lack of working premises, water, storage facilities and toilet accessibility. The project is about assisting local informal traders to improve their businesses and livelihoods in partnership with various industries. Some of the support the project provides to this particular group is basic skills development covering technical, basic managerial skills, and computer literacy, The project has partnered with the Msunduzi Municipality for a much more significant impact, especially in addressing the issue of trading permits and intervention, easing some of the sector’s daily difficulties.
Street vendors come across many challenges in the environment in which they work and thus being able to assist them will go a long way towards growing their businesses and boosting the informal economy in the Midlands.
Nontokozo Ngcobo: Centre Manager Email: NontokozoN@dut.ac.za Tel: 033 845 9065
January 2020 – December 2021
R150 000
