Africa-Press – Eswatini. The new Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund (YERF) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mandla Nkambule aims to transform and digitise the fund to ease accessibility.
Nkambule revealed this in the fund’s new strategic plan for 2022 – 2025, where he mentioned that the fund was transforming to respond to concerns of the youth.
“The change is to answer to the needs of our country’s youth and to improve service delivery,” he remarked.
“This transformation will increase the participation of the youth in contributing to the economic growth and development of the country through the establishment of sustainable enterprises and create job opportunities,” he said.
Nkambule mentioned the key strategic objectives and initiatives included the implementation of a robust loan management system which interphases with the accounting and banking system to produce accurate, complete and timely beneficiary accounts.
“Customers or beneficiaries accounts statements will be automatically generated and sent on emails automatically. Account balances and reminders to pay loans which are overdue would also be sent via SMSs,” he explained.
He stated that another objective was that they would be the roll-out of an interactive and online loan application where the aspiring youth entrepreneurs would be applying online and uploading all required documents.
He said the system would significantly enhance business processes by shortening the turnaround time of assessing the loans application and disbursement of funds.
“The accounts statements shall be automated generated from the system and sent via email to the youth entrepreneurs. Those who do not have access to technology will continue completing the pre-printed application forms which will be obtained at strategic points at the regions,” said Nkambule.
The CEO added that another objective of the strategy was that there would be decentralisation of services to the regions and sub-regions of the country of which the fund would be opening offices in the regions and establish satellite offices at the inkhundla and community centres.
“The fund’s business development officers (BDOs) will be stationed in all regional offices and shall provide all the services including providing training, assist with the completion and review of the application forms and requested supporting documents,” he said.
He mentioned that the BDOs would also provide mentorship and coaching and assist with market linkages including provision of business support or advice.
“The other objective is that there will be continuous loan applications where the call and submission of the loan’s applications would no longer be done in cycles or quarterly basis but will now be continuously,” he said.
Nkambule stated that the submitted and properly completed loan applications would be reviewed by the credit committee and response provided within a reasonable time which is not more than four weeks.
He added that the high rate of unemployment among young people, which was currently estimated at 55 per cent of the ages 18-35, was a challenge for government and policy makers across the globe.
“This is why there is the need for formulating a strategy that seeks to reduce the high rate of unemployment by affording the youth access to loans with no collateral, strengthening resource mobilisation and partnerships with private sector, non-profit organisations (NGOs’) and international donor or multi-national agencies and providing business development services,” he said.
Nkambule mentioned that the strategy was aligned to the government of Eswatini economic recovery strategy and the national development Plan and also anchored on the Eswatini National Youth Policy and Plan for 2022-2025.
“This is a progressive strategy from the 2017 – 2020 Strategic plan, which was mainly focused on resuscitation of the fund by “rebuilding the core by strengthening governance and Fund’s internal controls fabric”, themed ‘Rebuild, Redefine, Reposition,’ he said. He explained that this was successfully executed and delivered and was evident by the opening of loans applications to aspiring youth entrepreneurs.
“As part of this journey in shaping the future and empowering young people, we have transitioned to “transforming and digitising the fund to ease of accessibility” for our 2021 -2025 strategy,” said Nkambule.
He said this transition was a customer- centric strategy, which was meant to ensure that the fund was good in delivering its mandate, by driving digitisation and scale and the theme for this strategy was digitise, grow, sustain and impactful.
“The success of this strategy will be measured among others, by the impact it will have on the number of young people establishing owned businesses, low number of business failures and high loan repayment rate,” he said.
The CEO stated that the expected outputs of this new strategy were increase uptake, improved loan repayment, improved sustainable businesses and improved livelihood.
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