Africa-Press – Lesotho. The Entrepreneurs Network (TEN) in partnership with Buy Lesotho and Lesotho Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) will on November 22nd to 27th host the 2021 entrepreneurship expo.
The expo will be hosted in the South, North, Central regions of the country and there will also be an online exhibition. TEN is a non-profit platform of programs and initiatives aimed at growing the
entrepreneurial ecosystem and aims to be a think tank for creating jobs, accelerating innovation, and strengthening good entrepreneurial and professional practice.
TEN operates across all sectors and industries and intends to make Lesotho a more entrepreneur-friendly society by hosting regular events, one of which is the annual Entrepreneurship Business expo, to bridge
the gap between the aspirations of the entrepreneurial community, investors, clients, and policy makers. TEN Chairperson Stephen Monyamane explained that TEN was introduced in 2015 with
the purpose to centre business opportunities around Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) or entrepreneurs. He added that they then developed a programme called ‘The Hook Up’ Dinner, a pitch competition event whereby MSMEs
pitch their ideas on how they can raise capital, to do market validation, market access or seek technical partnerships. “After setting up the hook up dinner, we then discovered that the entrepreneurship
space is bigger than we thought so we established the entrepreneurship expo, which is an opportunity to exhibit what MSMEs and cooperates have,” he said.
He further said this is also to match make the needs for MSMEs and cooperates at the same time have a pattern in discussions that are related to growing the
economy of the country. He continued to say that ever since they came up with this expo idea, they received a great support from cooperates and development partners such as the banks,
insurance companies and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Monyamane said with this year’s expo, they are planning to go all out to make it a success in
all the four locations since last year they were not able to host it due to the pandemic. He said panel discussions will be held in Maseru and everything will
be live streamed for people in the districts to be able to participate. LCCI Information Technology (IT) Support Specialist Katleho Motete said LCCI is
looking after the economy and stability of the businesses in the country. “We have been trying to revive the economy of Lesotho and we are actively involved in
making sure that the business environment is sustainable,” he said. Meanwhile Ministry of Small Businesses Development, Cooperatives and Marketing Principal
Secretary (PS) Adv. Bereng Makotoko said earlier this year, his ministry introduced Sethala platform, an open platform where discussions are held between the public and private sector to
discuss and resolve challenges faced by MSMEs and Cooperatives. He further said through the forum they identified two things as major stumbling blocks for
proper growth in the MSMEs field and they were identified as access to finance and access to market. “An expo of this nature addresses those two blocks that we have identified,” he said.
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