The Drum Beat 552 - Entrepreneurship

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

An entrepreneur could simply be defined as someone who starts their own business - someone who works for himself or herself. But over the past ten years of publishing The Drum Beat, we've encountered the concept of entrepreneurship within development defined as "pioneering change" or "undertaking innovation", with the oft-used descriptors "social", "political", and "knowledge" (entrepreneurship). Back in 2006, we took a closer look at some social entrepreneurship resources, projects, and thinking. Many of these social, political, and knowledge efforts documented on The CI site also have a goal of economic gain for the stakeholders/communities in question. Here, I’ve collected a variety of economic entrepreneurship knowledge resources, networks, and support opportunities featured on The CI websites. I hope you find them illustrative and useful in your work.

- Deborah Heimann, Director - Editorial Policy & Content, The Communication Initiative.

 

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Sharing information and collaborating can be as important for economic development as they are for developing and strengthening ideas. The global Community of Young Entrepreneurs hosts an interactive website to strengthen networking and mutual learning among advocates for entrepreneurship and youth. The focus here is on policy advocacy, services for entrepreneurs, and access to information. The Incubator Initiative has grown over the past 8 years to encompass, in addition to a global network, 5 regional networks in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa. Through the "incubators", this initiative works to stimulate the emergence and growth of information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled small enterprises. Changemakers, which was launched back in 1994, focuses primarily on social entrepreneurs, but not to the exclusion of economic entrepreneurs, and continues to provide support and social networking opportunities through its collaborative online platform.

Know of other communities that support entrepreneurs? Send them our way! [email protected]

ICTs

You may notice that the above-mentioned networks are all virtual ones. My question: What case studies and research examine entrepreneurship from an information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) angle? I found primarily African projects and thinking. "Ever Upwardly Mobile: How do Cell Phones Benefit Vulnerable People?" includes the findings of a 2006 Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP) pilot project that distributed 10 cell phones to three women's farming cooperatives in Lesotho in an effort to understand how cell phones could benefit vulnerable populations. ICT Update Issue 49 had a focus on livelihoods and included a look at the Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) project, which set up 28 information centres throughout Ethiopia that provide farmers with information they need to develop new products and increase the yields of existing crops. The Sonke project in South Africa assessed the impact of ICTs on small, medium, and micro enterprises to see how these could be incorporated into the tourism industry. Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN)'s Ajegunle.org is a web-based effort to foster ICT opportunities, entrepreneurship training, and short-term internships for young people in Nigeria's underserved areas. Two other projects featured web-enabled economic development initiatives: Uganda Development Services (UDS) and Chinkokolola, located in Malawi.

For an examination of the growth of mobile technologies and their use for economic gain not only as support tools for expanding communication in the hands of health workers and often profits in the hands of farmers, but also as the "market" itself - where entrepreneurs sell airtime or make a living charging people's phones, see "Mobile Telephony and the Entrepreneur: An African Perspective".

Know of ICT4D entrepreneurship research and projects from other regions? Send them through! [email protected]

WOMEN

And what about women? Inequality isn't just a matter of policies or laws or rights, it's a matter of providing access to skills development and education, strengthening women's voices, and assisting them in collectively supporting each other to support themselves. 

Four projects provide examples of avenues of support. PROTEGE QV's Radio Training used radio-based learning and cell phones to give rural women in Cameroon skills that, it was hoped, would stimulate their desire to move on from survivalist activities to professional engagement in micro-enterprises. Besides the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the project involved the training of "communicators" who would help train other women and multiply the impact of the project. In Pakistan, Swat Youth Front (SYF) organised exposure/study tours for female entrepreneurs to historical places and the country's industrial areas in order to identify new channels and markets for the products sold by the women. SYF has also developed linkages between these entrepreneurs and raw material suppliers. Global Grassroots runs a 12-18 month "incubator" academy offering social venture development skills, leadership training, personal transformation practices, seed grants, and support to help disadvantaged women initiate their own civil society organisations. And finally, E-Knowledge for Women in Southern Africa (EKOWISA) developed a regional platform for local, national, and regional women entrepreneurs from Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa who are benefiting from using ICTs for their enterprises. They held workshops for women entrepreneurs and created linkages with women economists and other critical stakeholders involved in fair and international trade.

Got other examples of entrepreneurship projects in support of women or gender equality? Send them to [email protected]

STRENGTH AND SUPPORT

Looking for ways to launch a new idea or business? There are several communication opportunities, organisations, and projects that could help. Just a few include: the Open Society Fellowship, which supports idea entrepreneurs from around the world; Ashoka, a global non-profit organisation that identifies and supports, through stipends and professional services, social entrepreneurs who have innovative solutions to social problems in their countries; Kiva, a web-based microfinance process that links up people who have money to loan with entrepreneurs in developing countries who need capital; and the Indigenous Stock Exchange (ISX), which supports and develops indigenous start-ups in Australia.

Two books that might be useful are eCommerce for Small Enterprise Development: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries and Information, Technology and Small Enterprise: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries.

And lastly, this project doesn’t fall into any of the over-arching themes above, but it caught my eye all the same: The Instituto Ilhas do Brasil (Institute of Brazilian Islands) works to empower the traditional communities who depend on marine resources for their livelihood - with young people playing a main role in honouring (and disseminating) local knowledge. These young people are guided in creating projects that are designed to generate income, conserve natural resources, communicate the value local culture, and equip youth with professional skills.

Send communication for entrepreneurship resources to [email protected]

If you have COMMENTS on this new format of The Drum Beat, please either click here or send them to [email protected]

We'd love your feedback!

The Editor of The Drum Beat is Kier Olsen DeVries.


Please send material for The Drum Beat to [email protected]


The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.


To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, please see our policy.


To subscribe, click here.