We finished the compilation of the 2019 Business Opportunities for South Africans early this month and have submitted it to publishers. Great resource guide for South Africans…the book took us exactly a year and covers opportunity analysis, entrepreneurship skills, emerging business skills such as digital marketing, big data and 4th industrialisation opportunities. Specific chapters include Agriculture Opportunities, Women Opportunities, Youth Opportunities, Services Sector Opportunities and Risk Management.
What is unique about the book?
You are not going to find any book that captures business opportunities for South Africans..
You are also not going to find any book with contributions of more than 1000 South Africans…
The Zim Book:
A follow up to what we started in 2018 when we published probably the most viral entrepreneurship book in Zim history. It sadly leaked and social media blew up with copies circulating thousands of copies leaving us distraught. If we had managed to get a dollar each for every copy circulated then our objective of creating a pool fund for your business loans would have been achieved. We had our members in mind when we created the book.
So we are back again compiling the 2019 version and it goes a bit deeper than the 2018 version and is aligned to business operations. We do not just list opportunities but go deeper in analysing the opportunities, who is making money and how, the risks and analysis of the sector. In essence it becomes a book of business plans.
Our chapters include:
- Business Analysis and Discussions: You find a lot of material we already covered here and includes your input.
- Digital Marketing: We are passionate about access to markets and we introduced this topic in the 2018 version, we go a bit deeper with local case studies of successful digital campaigns. There is an addition of big data for entrepreneurs as well.
- Agriculture: A follow up to the 2018 book version and we cover other areas not covered such as tobacco farming, agro-processing opportunities and Zimbos farming on foreign land.
- Tourism: We take a cue from the SA book, this is a difficult field…you are not going to find a business book with tourism opportunities and yet this is a fast expanding sector where locals are restricted to the lower end of value chain such as taxis and curios. No skills on the big opportunities such as travel and accommodation, rural tourism and setting up linkages with foreign players.
- Mining: Due to space, we did not do justice to mining in our last book, this one goes deeper with an interesting mining value chain analysis, stories and case studies.
- Youth Opportunities: We are passionate about youths who are graduating but finding no jobs. We take various topics from the SA book and locally cover inspiring stories of young entrepreneurs, opportunities in the 4IR and include skills not covered at college level.
- Women Opportunities: Women form the bulk of our members and we had an excellent chapter in our debut book, we include more stuff covering cross border activities, our tours to the region and interviews with our members based on foreign land.
- The Services Sector: Zimbabwe possesses great human capital and we have the potential to be a regional hub but we are not tapping into plenty of opportunities presented on the global landscape. ICT, Transport, E-commerce, Regional Retail and others. We like our members to have a global mindset and follow trends across the globe.
- Rural Opportunities: A new addition this tackles opportunities in rural and peri-urban areas. About 70% of the population live in rural areas but there are few to no resources available to rural entrepreneurs. It covers the traditional opportunities but then inspires rural entrepreneurs to do more in areas such as energy, agro-processing, arts and crafts, tourism, health and ICT.
- Risk Management: We feel we did exceptionally well in the SA book covering risks that entrepreneurs face. More emphasis on digital risks and we include some of the cyber crimes people are experiencing in emerging opportunities such as Online Forex Trading, Bitcoin and E-commerce.
We keep the book short and sweet with a maximum 150 pages condensing all the opportunities, analysis and discussions. Expect a lot of your contributions to be covered. We keep the language simple, flowing and interesting. Business books are mostly boring especially to those with no keen interest in business…so we entice them with interesting stories, jokes…written in Shona, Ndebele and a bit of slang too…we keep it to the street level…not too formal.
So a great contribution to the local entrepreneurship landscape….expect the book by end of May 2019. So 10 chapters, 10 areas we are passionate about-this is our contribution to an area where you find few resources published by Zimbabweans.
