By Nangamso Mabindla
19 April 2004

Buffalo City will host an Entrepreneurship Summit on Wednesday 21 April aimed at promoting participation of entrepreneurs and Small and Medium Enterprises (SME's) in the economic mainstream.

The summit, to be held at the Regent Hotel in East London, will be attended by Minister of Mineral and Energy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who will also deliver the keynote address.

Also attending will be the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Lindiwe Hendricks and Ike Ngwena, executive director of ICT firm Oracle.

Summit organiser Pepsi Mtiya said it was important that aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs attended the summit. "At the workshop we will share ideas on business ownership and how to combat challenges facing entrepreneurs in South Africa," he said.

However, according to Mtiya the summit was going to tackle other aspects of business ownership. These include:

• Sharing of knowledge and information on business ethics
• Promoting of business awareness on challenges and strategies
• Creation of markets for business development
• Encouraging youth and women development in business

"We've got a lot of unemployed youth, these turn to crime as a means of escaping poverty," he said. "We need to teach them to become business minded and start their own businesses as opposed to turning to crime."

It was important to hold a workshop of this nature as some youth had business aspirations but did not know how to start a successful business. "At the workshop we'll also instruct aspiring entrepreneurs on how to start a business, who to contact; and how you go about running a successful business."

Mtiya said the summit would be a success and everyone involved would benefit. "I would like to call on executives, academics, entrepreneurs to grace the occasion; they will not regret it," he said.