How to promote entrepreneurship in elevated education

The South African government using funding mechanisms to dramatically increase the production of doctoral and research results in universities. Now clever ways must be found to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation in higher education, said Professor Ahmed Biwa, Deputy Rector of the University of Technology in Durban.

He also said for university curricula to include the component "general education" including entrepreneurship, stronger partnerships between universities and local stakeholders to drive business activities as well as more opportunities in universities for students to engage in entrepreneurial activities.

Biwa delivered a keynote speech at the Eighth Annual International Conference of the African Technology Network South 2015 on "training in entrepreneurship for economic renewal", held in the Science Park of the Vaal University of Technology in Gauteng province October 19 to 21.

The biggest challenges of South Africa with low economic growth, unemployment and inequality, said Biwa. But in villages across the country, people have become dependent on remittances - money sent by relatives working in cities - and it has destroyed local economies and economic activities, and therefore the ability of communities to escape poverty.

One lesson is that entrepreneurship is not just about economic growth or jobs or production knowledge and science in universities. "Those are very important, but entrepreneurship is about a much wider range of activities. It is primarily a social activity.

"It's about social justice. How can we recover most widely level of entrepreneurial spirit - the ability of individuals and communities to produce high levels of self-support. One of the challenges we face and universities to understand how to interact within that space. "

The role of the national government

Biwa described three policy-related areas that are key to the advancement of entrepreneurship and innovation.

The first is the national government, where there is a growing awareness of the need for broad-based entrepreneurship, as evidenced by the creation of the Ministry of Small Business Development.

"Is the department doing what must be done is another question. But at least there is recognition that the future of the economy depends primarily on small [business] sector."

While the 'big sector "of the economy is important, there are huge changes taking place that will lead to the erosion of employment. For example, progress in" learning machine "- the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed - means that much work used to be done by people will be done by machines in the coming decades.

Thus, the focus should be on small industry, Biwa claimed.

"The challenge is not about money. It's about culture and social development and new ways of engaging with people. It's also about psychology to tell people," your life is in your hands, you better take a grip. " "

"I'm not suggesting that there should be a help, but communities were not involved in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship is a big challenge."

The government should focus on policies that support this goal - and to rethink policies that were useless, as a recent policy for the licensing of small enterprises, which seemed like a good idea, but it is an obstacle to business creation; and the introduction of renewable energy projects that depend on large investments and deny opportunities for communities.