WOMENOMICS: Small businesses revel in exhibitions

Enacy Mapakame
Business Reporter
AT a small home factory in Harare’s Waterfalls suburb, Mrs Mavis Manyonga Makuwe (49) is manufacturing an innovative food container that she calls the Temp Bag — a bag that saves energy and keeps food warm for hours and cold for days.
Mrs Makuwe received a six-week training under a Government-SADC-Rhodes University environmental partnership.
Each month, the former teacher who owns Unique Innovations, a budding manufacturing firm, produces 400 Temp Bags and sells over 200, raking in more than $2 000 in revenue.
Some of the Temp Bags have been exported to Australia and Wales.
The Temp Bag is made from thick insulating recyclable material and is particularly useful when travelling. Foods that need extensive simmering like mutakura (samp) and beans can do so in the Temp Bag after the actual cooking, thereby helping in energy saving.

“When we started in 2012, we used to produce between 20 and 50 Temp Bags per month, but production has increased more than 700 percent due to rising demand,” Mrs Makuwe told The Sunday Mail Business in an interview at the International SME Expo last week, where she is exhibiting for the third time.
With the Temp Bag already patented, Mrs Makuwe represents not only how small innovative businesses are helping to drive economic growth through product and employment creation, but also the impact of exhibitions on boosting sales and creating markets and market linkages.
Unique Innovations has grown from being a one-person firm to an employer of six permanent employees, with another half-dozen seasonal workers.
Mrs Makuwe said much of the growth has been enabled by Government policies that promote entrepreneurship, including exhibitions such as the International SMEs Expo held in Harare last week.
This is also the reason why the number of local and foreign small businesses showcasing at the expo has jumped up 55 percent from 91 last year to 141 this year.
Project coordinator Ms Rumbidzai Mashayahanya said first-time exhibitors rose 17 percent from last year.
Local exhibitors reached 110 this year, while the remaining 31 were foreign, mainly from Malawi and South Africa.
“This is the fifth year we are running the International SMEs Expo and it has grown bigger. The business conference, for example, is oversubscribed as we have received overwhelming response,” Ms Mashayahanya said.
The informal sector now employs over 85 percent of Zimbabwe’s employable population, according to official figures from the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency (Zimstats).
However, the growth of SMEs is fraught with many challenges such as constricted access to finance, markets, business advisory services and support networks.
Lack of infrastructure, limited leadership and financial management skills, and poor marketing and growth strategies also pose serious challenges.
Expos help bridge the gap.
“The idea is for SMEs to think internationally by producing goods that compete on the international market.
“This expo will therefore expose local SMEs to international standards and quality as well as push them to form synergies,” said Ms Mashayahanya.
From arts and craft to agriculture, detergent manufacturing and renewable energy, small businesses are kicking it up notwithstanding the various challenges in the economy.
Many exhibitors at the expo noted that they have the ability to compete with the big players.
However, Mrs Lettsia Chingama, a participant at the expo said Zimbabweans still need to fully embrace small businesses as they have the potential to turn into huge conglomerates.
She indicated that the buy local campaign has the potential to serve as a launch pad for small businesses. Bigger companies, she added, have a role to play in nurturing start-up businesses.
“My business is growing because of the support that I am getting here, and now we are supplying uniforms, curtains and overlays to big companies. Initiatives such as this expo help us market ourselves and I appreciate them,” she said.
Foreign exhibitors like Miss Dikeledi Roberts of Bottle Ba Ma-Afrika of South Africa said this has been the first time for her organisation to showcase her cultural products in Zimbabwe.
She said the expo presented an opportunity for her to create market linkages as well as learn from Zimbabwean counterparts.
“We wanted to explore new markets and see how SMEs in Zimbabwe are fairing,” she said, adding that the region has potential for SMEs growth.
Ms Roberts emphasised the need to use locally available resources, bein creative and exploiting every available opportunity for entrepreneurship.
Another foreign exhibitor from Malawi, Mrs Maggie Tizifa said while this has been her first time at the expo, she has been in Zimbabwe for other business expos such as the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) which she said boosted her business.
“We come here at the invitation of the Zimbabwean Government, I always go back home smiling,” she said, adding that the country presents fertile opportunities for growth.
The expo ran under the theme ‘Smart Trade, Smart Partnership to Promote SME Growth and Sustainability’.