By: Tomás Alberto
Africa-Press – Angola. Here there is only one option: accept being forced into entrepreneurship, within the conveniences of some public managers, or else you will be excluded. Because there are no solid Angolan companies that guarantee employment or self-employment in these areas for young people.
Entrepreneurship should not replace job creation policies. Experience has shown us that promoting entrepreneurship when it is not a task for business owners fosters informality, creates habits and customs of selling anywhere, and jeopardizes the State’s source of revenue (taxes).
Once again, this mistake is being repeated in the promotion of digital entrepreneurship. When people become entrepreneurs out of necessity and not opportunity, the result will be: a growing informal economy, low productivity, unsustainable businesses, unfair competition, and a lack of labor protection. In other words, instead of promoting development, it will create more social fragility.Public administration should not so heavily promote an activity that fosters informality and undermines social protection.
Entrepreneurship should be a strategic option, not a solution to unemployment problems. Ideally, the following would apply: Those who want to be entrepreneurs would have the necessary support. Those who want to work would have dignified work. Those who want to innovate would have a space. And those who want stability would have an opportunity.
The massive participation in public tenders, and the influx of applicants when there are vacancies in companies, unequivocally shows that young people prefer employment or self-employment to entrepreneurship. This indicator should not be ignored.
Public administration should not so heavily promote entrepreneurship; instead, it should provide support to companies that present employment opportunities. This is because these companies have an obligation to train their human resources to better serve their clients and generate income.I hear many public managers talking about paradigm shifts, but the truth is that the modus operandi remains the same. This practice of promoting entrepreneurship through non-profit public institutions, instead of supporting entrepreneurs, is not economically sustainable.
Digital kits, instead of mitigating problems, generate consumption, and as if that weren’t enough, consumption in foreign currency.
The institutional support and funds given to public incubators or those with public agreements that don’t employ anyone should be given to existing private companies with market experience. In a market economy, the role of public institutions is to strengthen technical and higher education, develop the strategic sector, improve energy and telecommunications, combat corruption and bureaucracy, guarantee real credit, and not compete with the private sector, which is their partner.
It seems that from the point of view of economic experience, program and project implementation, we continue to make the same mistakes; the role of the entrepreneur, who is a partner of the State in a market economy context, is being ignored.
The promotion of entrepreneurship in Angola is extremely exaggerated, and it’s promoted by public institutions.
Forcibly training young people for something they didn’t ask for, and many of them don’t want, is, and always will be, a recipe for failure – indeed, the results speak for themselves.
Some even dare to say that young people aren’t prepared, when all they’re given is a pile of theoretical content (without ever having gone through a real internship), accompanied by some kits, and after that, they’re left to their own devices.
There are funds and institutional support for public and convenience incubators, but there’s no institutional or financial support to help the companies that will employ the incubatees. Some public managers, instead of being partners, are also competing with entrepreneurs.
There’s funding for consulting, yes. There’s funding for training young people without their consent, yes. There’s funding for gifts and space rental for inventions, yes. Because we know who the real beneficiaries are. But there’s never any support for the companies that are the state’s source of revenue.
The world today is a global village, and because of that, it has become much more competitive. Sometimes I wonder, do we really believe that these young people who emerge from these incubators, with their computer kits, full of theories, without practical experience and without financial resources, are truly capable of competing with the companies that own the international platforms operating in our cyberspace for over 15 years, companies that, in addition to experience, possess robust financial capital equivalent to the General State Budget?!
When we talk about digital entrepreneurship, we must first look after the companies; they, in turn, will create incubators to empower young people so that they are ready for the challenges of the market and can better represent the company that trained them. The opposite is to empower consumers of a service that is not provided by an Angolan company or based in Angola, where payment will be in foreign currency, jeopardizing the sovereignty of the Kwanza. It is also to create entrepreneurs who will become frustrated over time due to a lack of results. Why not start a business with a kit consisting of a computer and just 1,000,000 KZ?Entrepreneurship involves taking great risks, facing financial instability at the beginning, difficulties in managing people, dealing with bureaucracy, taxes, failures, and uncertainties. This is not something that can be learned in a year of incubation, much less overcome with kits. It requires experience, maturity, resilience, and persistence—qualities rare in inexperienced young people.
In these 50 years of National Independence, we need to engage in deep reflection. It is clear that all of us, especially young people, want to preserve the achievements reached so far. – But truth be told, the attitude of some public managers in refusing to serve the public interest and neglecting to address certain issues aimed at improving the business environment in Angola, and consequently generating jobs, is jeopardizing these achievements.
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