South Africa’s start-up ecosystem is a thriving hub of innovative and talented entrepreneurs with a desire to scale, and in support of this, telecommunications group Telkom is providing five small, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs) the opportunity to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC+Africa), being held in Cape Town this week.

Saturated founder Mamello Mofokeng; Mapha Logistics founder Loyiso Vatsha; Horizontal Gravity, trading as Bang Capital, founder Benjamin Tshefu; Space Salad founder Thabo Tsolo; and Ball Talent founder Lesego Ndlovu will attend the event, for which Telkom is a partner, from March 13 to 14, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

GEC+Africa, an initiative of Global Entrepreneurship Network, connects entrepreneurs and leaders from more than 50 African nations to the best global resources and investor network, to create platforms that will drive collaborative ecosystems and advocate for policies that will empower sustainable growth for SMMEs across Africa.

“At Telkom, we are as committed as ever to the small-business owners who invest their ideas, sweat and money into developing businesses,” said Telkom Group Digital Solutions executive Randall Abrahams.

Since 2015, Telkom has supported over 2 600 local, disadvantaged SMMEs with incubation, investment, connectivity and business-development support services through its Enterprise and Supplier Development Programme, Telkom FutureMakers, which aims to “ignite creativity, challenge conventional thinking and empower” entrepreneurs to develop new value propositions that will propel them for global success.

The programme is aimed at enhancing market access opportunities, driving information and communication technology innovation and fostering inclusive participation of majority youth-, women- and black-owned SMMEs in Telkom’s supply and value chain, ensuring it accurately represents the local communities in which Telkom operates.

“Telkom has long appreciated the role that South Africa's entrepreneurs play for our country. Our commitment to the development of entrepreneurs is not merely lip service, we actively invest in SMMEs so that they can, in turn, contribute to the South African economy. We relentlessly seek to make the ground fertile for entrepreneurship and innovation to thrive. This mandate is an accurate reflection of Telkom’s ultimate purpose – to seamlessly connect people to better lives,” concluded Telkom head of business development Tshepo Phetla.