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This is what entrepreneurs need to thrive

In the next decade, one billion more young people will enter the job market, and in order to keep pace with this growing workforce, the global economy will need to create 600 million jobs in the next 10 years.

That works out to 5 million jobs a month. Compounding these figures, one third of young people globally are not currently in employment, education, or training and nearly 85% live in developing and insecure

economies.

While no single panacea exists to address these enormous challenges, in my organization we have come to realize that providing more substantial support to young job creators could make a significant impact on job growth in the years to come. This approach is risky. We don’t yet have data to prove that it will work or how much growth will result. But the numbers suggest that taking this risk is an imperative to make progress with youth employment.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with several exceptionally motivated twenty-something entrepreneurs from Democratic Republic of Congo, Tunisia and Senegal – people who have created rapidly expanding, forward-looking enterprises. All have the capacity to create hundreds or thousands of jobs over their careers and to create a ripple effect in their countries.

Based on those conversations, I have four recommendations for governments grappling with increasing job creation, and their international supporters:

Modify taxation structures and regulatory environments to encourage the growth of business led by young people. The young entrepreneurs I spoke with all mentioned the punitive taxation structure they experience.

One explained: “When you start a business, it takes an average of three years to break even. But, you have to pay 25% tax on your revenue (not profit) from the first year.” Another spoke of “both the bureaucracy as well as the culture of lethargy, indifference, and corruption” at mid-levels in the government institutions that he must navigate in expanding his alternative energy provision enterprise.

These tax, regulatory, and bureaucratic challenges are keeping many young entrepreneurs in the informal, and unregistered, economy. They cannot get access to financing and other support they need to grow their businesses and create more jobs.

Create and support more incubators and accelerators. Effective business incubators and accelerators are an imperative. (Business incubators focus on helping start-ups succeed and grow; accelerators are generally focused on businesses that are established, but need help expanding.) They can not only help budding entrepreneurs navigate complex regulations, institutions, and identify sources of capital, they also can provide low-cost space, access to networks, mentors, and supportive peers.

All the entrepreneurs I spoke with stressed that young people have great ideas, but don’t have the support and opportunities that they need to succeed.

“There are 12 [accelerators] in Senegal; we need more,” one entrepreneur explained to me. Another, who is currently hosted in an incubator in Tunisia, credits that incubator with supporting his business’ rapid growth.

Mentors are a particularly important support that incubators – or other programs – can provide. One entrepreneur explained that “small businesses fail because people don’t ‘do their homework’ and don’t know what it takes to succeed; people lack business skills and mentors, and they can’t get to the next level.”

Highlight role models and champions. Several of the young entrepreneurs spoke passionately about the significance of role models in their environments. One talked about skepticism from family and friends. “[Family and friends say], ‘Why do you want to do this?’ I was inspired by a young entrepreneur in Nigeria.”Another stressed that the idea of entrepreneurship is alien to many young people, and without tangible examples of success, few will take this path.

Also needed are champions, established and credible brokers to help young entrepreneurs gain footing. One entrepreneur maintains his position at an international bank for precisely that reason. “I keep my day job to have the link between the street and inside. [Young entrepreneurs] need inside people who can vouch for them.”

Facilitate building networks and creating connections. They could not overemphasize the value of getting access to networks and leveraging connections. Opportunities for financing and markets often exist but are not accessible to new – and especially young – entrepreneurs.

Those challenges suggest a need to build business-to-business networks at a national and local level; provide specific entry points and navigation support; and help the networks gain credibility with government. As one entrepreneur explained: “The government doesn’t see us as partners, they see us as disrupters. They think we have other motives.” Connections with credible networks can dispel this perception.

Special attention to reaching low-skilled youth. A history of policy to support entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprise has taught us that simply focusing on business growth will not necessarily create jobs for the neediest populations – those with lower skills.

One entrepreneur highlighted this point, explaining: “When we create jobs, we need to target people with limited skills.” But, he added, this takes extra effort and “creativity.” He described an entrepreneur he had supported, a shoemaker who had hired 12 people for low-skilled jobs.

The implications for donors and programmers is that creating jobs and reaching marginalized populations requires special attention to both of these factors. Simply creating sustainable jobs will not necessarily reach the neediest, and simply focusing on training for the most marginalized will not create the volume of sustainable jobs needed.

The entrepreneurs I spoke to offered a specific call to action. Donors, they said, should use the leverage that they have with governments to help create change – in policy and regulatory environments, and in the bureaucracies and cultures that hinder young entrepreneurs from growing their enterprises.

For their part, donors need data – to show the long-term job creation impacts of their investments – and entrepreneurs and programmers must commit to collecting and sharing this evidence.

The heart of entrepreneurship in developing economies rests squarely on the entrepreneurs themselves – those who bring vision, determination, passion, courage, resilience, the willingness to take risks, to adapt and innovate, to risk failure, and the ability to pick themselves up each time. As one explained: “[New entrepreneurs need] courage and patience to accept their mistakes, rise up after falling and be ready to make new mistakes and face new challenges. I believe that there is not any one unique path to success, so we should be ready to try new roads and take some risks.”

From Genocide to African Catwalks 

How Rwandan Women Are Building Their Lives and the Fashion Industry

Rwandan fashion designer Colombe Ndutiye Ituze uses the services of the women who sew at the Centre César, a community centre in village of Avega in Kimironko, near Kigali, Rwanda's capital. The centre runs free training sessions and classes here include course in mechanics, traditional singing and dancing, and silk screening. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

KIGALI, Jun 23 2014 (IPS) - Before Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, Salaam Uwamariya’s husband, a professor, was the family breadwinner, providing for her and their eight children. Uwamariya sold vegetables at a nearby market to supplement their income.

But like many in this Central African nation, her life changed in just the 100 days starting in April 1994 when close to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Among the dead were her husband and her two eldest children.

But Uwamariya has been able to slowly rebuild her life by making clothes that are sold locally and overseas and which have also even been shown on African catwalks.

“It’s exciting making clothes for people in Canada because we’re getting some income...The challenges are now to get a niche business, to get more orders, more clothes to sew.” -- Salaam Uwamariya

Today, thanks to Centre César, a community centre which in 2005 “adopted” her village of Avega in Kimironko, near Kigali, the country’s capital, Uwamariya has learned new skills and is able to support her family.
“I lost my family, a lot of materials, my house, everything,” she tells IPS in the local Kinyarwanda language.
She also lost her parents, aunts and uncles in the genocide.
“I was affected greatly… I can’t express it…”

Avega is made up of 150 houses and has a population of 750. With financial support from Canadian charity Ubuntu Edmonton, the centre runs training sessions for residents whose lives have been scarred by genocide. Classes here include courses in mechanics and silk screening. There is also a school sponsorship programme and daycare centre and a sewing shop where Uwamariya works. Over 85 people are said to pass through the doors of Centre César and benefit from their services every week.
“[Sewing] has improved my life a lot because I get some revenue from it. It improves my life and the lives of my children,”  says Uwamariya, who says she earns up to 3,000 Rwandan Francs (4.44 dollars) for making one dress, which she says takes no more than two days. All sewers are paid a fair trade wage, with the money going directly to the women.
Using industrial machines, members of the centre have been taught to sew by Edison Hategekimana, one of the centre’s two master tailors and the only man here. He taught Uwamariya over a year, but she says it “wasn’t challenging”.
On any given day up to 20 women, including Uwamariya, 58, are packed into a room working laboriously on dresses, jackets, pants, bags, aprons and pyjamas bags and jewellery in bold African prints.
Many of the items they tirelessly piece together are the creations of upcoming Rwandan fashion designer Colombe Ndutiye Ituze.
Strangely enough it was an international counterpart, Canadian Johanne St. Louis, who pointed out the local talent available to help Ituze.
The pair met at the Rwanda Fashion Festival 2010. St. Louis is the CEO of St. Louis Fashion and Dreamyz Loungewear. Ituze launched her INCO Icyusa label, one of Rwanda’s first fashion houses, in 2011.
“I really loved her clothes and I asked her where do you get things done and she told me they were made by these women [at Centre César],” Ituze tells IPS.
“I came here [to Centre César] in 2011. From 2012 all my production was done here. I’ve worked with the tailors in town, but here they are very talented. For large orders they’re the best people to come to.”
When Ituze discovered the centre, she said many of its members possessed basic sewing skills. St. Louis had trained some, and those she trained taught others.
“The first time I came here they were good, but not as good as they are now. They’re improving all the time,” says Ituze.
Today the clothes that Uwamariya and her colleagues stitch together are sold in Ituze’s store in Nziza, Kigali. St Louis sells pieces in her clothing store in her house in Cannington, about 110 km outside Toronto.
“It’s exciting making clothes for people in Canada because we’re getting some income,” says Uwamariya. “The challenges are now to get a niche business, to get more orders, more clothes to sew.”
“I want to partner with other people, with other fashion designers.”
This may happen sooner rather than later, with Ituze and St.Louis talking to more international stores about stocking their designs.
Together they opened DODA Fashion House last September. Doda means, “to sew” in Kinyarwanda.
They have a workshop in Kimironko, Kigali, which will eventually employ four fulltime staff and the plan to hire an additional 14 women to begin training and creating products.
In the next five years their workshop will hopefully offer training courses in commercial sewing, design, sewing machine mechanics and marketing. It’s a huge step for the industry in tiny Rwanda, which doesn’t have a fashion school.
Meanwhile, back at Centre César, its supervisor Alain Rushayidi tells IPS he will only be truly satisfied when the charity is able to transfer its ownership to the people of Avega.
“This centre has to become their centre. In 10 or 15 years this will belong to the members, all of them,” he says.
Rushayidi says a structure to help the centre become sustainable and financially independent is currently being implemented.
“I can’t explain the challenges before we started [the centre],” Rushayidi says.
“We used to have a food bank in the village. We have people infected with HIV.”
Ten years later, he says “of course things aren’t 100 percent better, but lives have improved.”

According to Bord Gáis Networks safety personnel lives are being put at risk by illegal tampering with gas meters, as people try to save on fuel bills.

More than 500 cases of illegal tampering with gas meters have been detected since last September, with 90 of those being confirmed in the last six weeks.
Counties involved include Dublin, Meath, Kildare, Cork, Waterford and Louth.
According to Owen Wilson, safety officer at Bord Gáis Networks, there are a number of different ways that meters are being tampered with but all of them involve some kind of damage being done.
He said the tampering is being done by individuals, as well as those offering it as a service
“It’s being done by individual people, and there are also people going around offering to tamper with people’s meters for a flat fee,” he said.
“We do tend to see it in neighbourhoods or discreet areas.”
Mr Wilson said they have had 500 detections since September, and he is confident the company will detect all cases of tampering “in due course”.
In the meantime, however, he urged people not to tamper with their meters as doing so can lead to a gas leak, which in turn could cause serious damage or death.
***
Robert Pitt has been named Group Chief Executive Officer of Independent News & Media. He will take up his role this autumn.
For the last two years Robert Pitt has been Chief Operations Officer of Tesco Czech Republic. He has also worked at Lidl in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ireland; and at Shibo in Beijing.
He takes over from Vincent Crowley, who stepped down as the Company's CEO in May.
Leslie Buckley, Independent's chairman said the news publishing sector faces many challenges and Robert Pitt - whose experience includes change-management and digital strategy - is well equipped to lead INM into the future.

***
Property investment company Hibernia REIT is to buy Guild House and Commerzbank House in Dublin's IFSC for €90.74m in its biggest deal yet.
The purchase will be its 9th since listing on the stock exchange, and it will have spent €337m, or 91% of the proceeds it raised in December 2013.
***
Manchester United has signed a record shirt deal after landing a £750m tie-up with German sportswear group Adidas.

The deal guarantees the English club at least £75m a year for the next 10 years - more than three times the £23.5m Nike had paid for the team's current deal.

And it's more than double the £31m, eight-year deal under which Adidas makes and sells Real Madrid's shirts. The agreement gives Adidas the exclusive right to distribute Adidas and Man Utd dual branded products around the world.
***
Yesterday shares in Shire, the Dublin-based British drugs group, hit a record high after its board said it was ready to recommend a new £31bn offer from US firm AbbVie. Shire said it was ready to recommend the deal, the latest in a list of mergers proposed by US firms looking to cut their tax bills, and which comes less than seven weeks after the collapse of Pfizer Inc's 69.08 billion pound bid for AstraZeneca Plc.
Chicago-based AbbVie, which wants to buy Shire to cut its tax bill and diversify its product line-up, increased its offer to 53 pounds and 20 pence a share on Sunday, following a request from the Dublin-based group which had rejected four previous bids.

European bank 'hit by sophisticated cyber-thefts'

A security firm has reported uncovering evidence of cyber-thieves robbing more than 190 customers of a European bank.

Kaspersky Lab said it had detected a computer server in January being used to co-ordinate an attack that appeared to have snatched more than 500,000 euros ($700,000; £400,000) over the course of a single week.
The firm said it believed most of the victims were based in Italy and Turkey.

It said that it had alerted the authorities to the problem.
However, it added, the criminals managed to delete any evidence that could have been used to trace them before they could be identified.
The firm declined to identify the bank involved.
Unidentified malware Kaspersky has codenamed the campaign Luuuk, and said that it believed a Trojan program was used to intercept financial data and allow fraudulent transactions to be made as soon as each victim logged into their online bank account.
But it acknowledged there were still gaps in its knowledge.

"On the command-and-control server we detected there was no information as to which specific malware program was used in this campaign," said Vicente Diaz, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, in a statement.
"We believe the malware used in this campaign could be a Zeus flavour."
Zeus is the name given to a type of Trojan malware first detected in 2007, which allows data to be stolen from computers running the Windows operating system. It has been linked to previous bank thefts that ran into the millions of pounds.
Kaspersky said that it thought the way Zeus was used in this attack involved inserting rogue information into the bank's webpages when they were downloaded, allowing confidential data to be stolen.
It said that according to the computer logs it had obtained, the sums stolen from each account appeared to range from 1,700 euros to 39,000 euros.
While the detected computer server has now been shut down, the firm warned that it believed the thieves could strike again, adding that it planned to search for evidence of the Luuuk campaign continuing.
"This looks to be very significant - it's not so much the absolute amount reported to be stolen, but the speed at which it was taken out," Alan Woodward, an independent security consultant, told the BBC.
"The way you have to get this money into the real world involves sending it to real accounts and getting 'money mules' to take it out, so would require significant organisation."