Your Business is at Risk

In any South African community the greatest risk to your business is unemployment, poverty that leads to crime. We can ignore it or hope that it will go away or be sorted out by government or someone else but the fact is that we are all in this together and we will be have to find solutions and take action together.

You need only read the article by Desmond Tutu that appeared in the Cape Argus Feb 2009 under the heading “SA sits on a powder keg” - Call for South African ‘Marshall Plan’, Archbishop Tutu has hit the nail on the head. We go further and say that to achieve a South Africa that is safe, with high employment and prosperous, nothing less than the mobilisation of all South Africans, must now begin to take place, to address unemployment, poverty and crime as a matter of urgency (we should have started years ago).

Now if you think all this unpleasantness will simply go away or that your business will be immune to the negative implications of poverty, unemployment and crime, then definitely this kind of thinking by business on a large scale, will put our entire community at risk and this will include the future of your business and all else you own and hold dear.

Did you know that if we were to measure entrepreneur development as an indication of South Africa’s ability to create jobs, South Africa would rank very low in the world? Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), now in its seventh year, is a worldwide project that monitors levels of entrepreneurial activity in 35 countries.

The latest data shows that the South Africa's entrepreneurship ranking has dropped from 20th position (out of 34 countries) in 2004 to 25th position (out of 35 countries) in 2005. In a nutshell, the findings on South Africa:

1. We are way behind other developing countries.
   
2. Our total entrepreneur development is slipping year after year.
   
3. Start-ups. Our performance is way behind other countries.
   
4. We lack entrepreneurial self-confidence.

At BBN we believe that this is a serious challenge to our safety, security and prosperity in South Africa in the years to come. We need to take up this challenge to begin the process of reversing the findings of the GEM report. Only then can we expect to reduce crime on a significant scale. We have begun the process, thank goodness it is a win-win one that is professional and which we believe will get most thinking and concerned businessmen and women saying: Can I afford not to be part of it?