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 4^th 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:

1. Business Analysis and Discussions: You find a lot of material we already covered here and includes your input.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.

You have all seen the effects and impact of the Cyclone Idai….devastating impact to Chimanimani and Chipinge. It’s unfortunate that we have lost a lot of lives and livelihoods have been destroyed.

The cyclone wreaked havoc in southern parts of Malawi and the Mozambican side last week and this should have been a heads up of what was coming our way. Unfortunately we were caught unawares and resulted in some avoidable loss of lives.

Perhaps the poor response can be attributed to the fact that cyclones are a rare phenomenon in this part of the equator. The last devastating cyclone was Cyclone Eline in the year 2000. Cyclone Japhet was a follow up but the impact was not as severe as what we experienced with Cyclone Idai.

For risk management professionals, are you considering the impact of climatic change in your strategies? Do your risk registers include climatic change and natural disasters? When carrying out risk assessments, are you giving enough weighting to climatic change impact?

Are audit reports including this important area or the focus is strictly on financial transactions? Just check the social and economic damage done to:

1. Hundreds of human lives lost in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe
2. Thousands of livestock lost
3. Farm produce lost
4. Roads, dams, telecommunication and electricity infrastructure
5. Irrigation systems damaged
6. Bridges, homes, shops, clinics, prisons and  hospitals damaged
7. Cost to education, school infrastructure destroyed, access roads destroyed

We are talking of damage running into hundreds of millions of dollars. Does this make sense why the issue of climatic change is finding itself in financial subjects? The drought experienced during the year is already another huge cost and a cyclone was the last thing we were anticipating! Add to this an economy which is struggling for recovery.

How many organisations had fully covered climatic change in their strategies? How many banks were monitoring the development of the cyclone over the Indian Ocean? How many had assessed the potential impact of climatic conditions on their business operations?

Econet, Telecel and Netone will have to repair damaged infrastructure.

Fuel companies will have to consider the impact of damaged roads and bridged between Mutare and Beira. We may potentially end up with fuel shortages in the country.

NGOs operating in parts of Manicaland and Masvingo will have to count losses to their programs as damages were done to clinics, irrigation systems, dams, agriculture and more.

If you had shops or farming activities then you were also hit with buildings washed away or collapsing. Tobacco farmers have their barns destroyed and crops as well.

So when considering investment, are you fully assessing all the risks? When crafting business strategies and models, are you covering environmental issues fully?

This is food for thought for entrepreneurs, the unfortunate part is insurance companies consider issues such as cyclones ‘Acts of God’ and therefore do not cover this area meaning businesses have to fully absorb the losses and write them  off their balance sheets.

We have also noted over the years that varying rainfall patterns are also increasing the likelihood of earth tremors in the eastern part of Zimbabwe. We expect more tremors or even earthquakes to follow Zimbabwe in 6-10 months time due to the impact of Cyclone Idai. The tremors may even damage more properties that would have been repaired or those not affected by the cyclone.

Is this risk on your radar? Does your organisational strategy include it? Does climatic risk feature prominently in your management and board reports? Are you discussing this for the first time? Correct the weakness and closely monitor emerging risks coming from environmental changes.

Meanwhile we would like to acknowledge the sterling work done by the Honourable Joshua Sacco the Member of Parliament of Chimanimani West. He has been visible, getting his hands dirty, appealing for aid and keeping communication lines open. Great example of how to deal with disasters. The situation could have been better if we had planned better for the response given the lead time the cyclone took from Malawi and Mozambique before hitting our eastern region.

Perhaps devolution needs to be taken seriously and empower provincial governments because they have first hand of local developments. They are better prepared to take pre-emptive action before Harare gives a go ahead.

For more help for cyclone victims get in touch with Econet and David Coltart. They are running Appeal funds-kindly donate and assist our brothers and sisters in need.