adminand multinational corporations which usually are controlled and owned institutions which may or may not assist in building entrepreneurial infrastructure in host nations.
While Foreign Direct Investment is a welcome source of investment and development, emerging economies such as Zimbabwe need to take immediate and firm steps to develop local entrepreneurs from a very early age.
Individuals shouldn’t become entrepreneurs by fluke or by chance. There is need to put national efforts and resources to develop entrepreneurs from early in life.
Zimbabwe and other emerging markets should welcome FDI but should ensure that local population do not remain perennial cheap labour providers without any hope of ever graduating into shareholders and business owners.
The providers of FDI should be pro-active and seek to use local suppliers wherever possible as a way to support local entrepreneurs to slowly enter the entrepreneurship ladder. In the long run, such relationships build long-term stability for all stakeholders including the foreign investors.
Entrepreneurship like any essential life skill can be learnt, developed and refined and this is best done from very early stages in life.
The educational system in Zimbabwe like many other emerging countries, which were once colonised, was modelled upon their colonisers and the majority of the population was trained and groomed towards being employees and not potential employers.
It’s true that not everyone can be an employer but its also accurate to say everyone must be given an opportunity to be a potential employer at a very early age.
Considering how nations are forming into regional groups such as Ecowas, EU, NAFTA, Sadc, etc, which are essentially economic and political groupings meant to retain all economic activity within members between members it’s imperative for nations like Zimbabwe to develop comprehensive entrepreneurial based education models.
They can develop globally competitive entrepreneurs.
The challenge to be globally competitive should be part of a National Economic Vision, which is driven by local entrepreneurs who would have been trained and groomed from a very early age.
Training teenagers about entrepreneurship from an early age will teach them proper values such as the need to think long term and seek to build wealth over a sustained period without resorting to
asset grabbing or looting already established businesses only to run them into the ground.
Youngsters have to be trained on the ethics and spirit required to build a solid business which can be passed from one generation to the next based on proper corporate structures and systems.
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