Entrepreneurship Education is a Human Right
entrepreneurship
education is a human right
a simple statement may be even
provocative but one we
simply can’t afford to ignore with the
future that awaits us
the average human would think of
themselves
as a good person not that i’m calling
any of you average of course
but what if i told you that we are
denying
young children this fundamental right
i’m going to tell you how we’re doing
this and what we can do
differently so that in future we can
look at ourselves
and the younger generation guilt-free
so let me tell you a story about 2008
the year the financial crisis was
wreaking havoc
with businesses worldwide one of them
being my then husband’s technology
business
during that year both his business
and our marriage unraveled and he
struggled with a depression
leaving him unable and unwilling to work
we had just bought a house on the basis
of two salaries and suddenly i was the
only person
employed and then one day
a clash in values with the managing
director
of the company where i worked
led me to walk out with no job in hand
no opportunities no hope
everything suddenly resembled this
vuca world that i’d heard so much about
volatile uncertain complex
and ambiguous at 35
i had to start over in a world that held
no answers
so what did i do i became an
entrepreneur
what gave me the impetus to start
so i’d like to say that i created some
um disruptive technology in my garage
but no that wasn’t it i was just
desperate
i needed to find meaning but i had no
idea
where or how to start
the story of garrett morgan is an
interesting one
nicknamed the black thomas edison
he was born to parents who were former
southern slaves in the u.s in 1877
and as is the case with most ex-slaves
his family was confined to a life of
poverty
so garrett along with 10 of his siblings
were put to work on the fields at the
age of
five he attended a one-room black only
school
um only up to primary level because
there was no high school to go to
so at 14 garrett became a handyman
and he used his earnings to hire a tutor
to enrich his
education at 18 with only 10 cents to
his
name and very few resources he created
his first
invention a belt fastener
over the years through various
experiments
failed and otherwise he created
a few entrepreneurial ventures in
sectors as diverse
as a hair products business and a sewing
machine repair
store his entrepreneurial streak though
led him to huge successes in the safety
sector with traffic lights and
innovating on fire safety hoods
so what i want to focus in on on these
two stories
is how we both dealt with our versions
of the vuca world on the one hand a top
student in school
and university with three degrees in
hand at the time
and many years of work experience on the
other
a child with little formal education
but with a hunger for answers
for all my education and resources
i had not learned how to think
entrepreneurially
and i was of the generation and
community
where the norm was to go to school get
good grades
go to university work and then make your
way up the corporate ladder
it took a year of chaos at 35
to make me comfortable with uncertainty
to unlearn and re-learn
and to find a new way of engaging with
the world
you see i like most of you i would
assume
had learned how to interact with subject
matter
in a specific way with the sage on the
stage
memorizing facts and knowing that to
every
question there was a right answer and a
wrong one
and you needed to get to the right
answer with a set formula
in place my entire identity
was tied into not failing to get to that
right answer
and in that one right way garrett
on the other hand was not boxed in
his thinking by the methods of a formal
school education
his need and drive to find solutions to
the problems he saw
led him to innovate and imagine in
different ways
in ways that i had not been able to
in 1987 the u.s army war college
coined this concept of vuca to describe
the world
that was a consequence of the cold war
since 2019 the coronavirus crisis
has made this vuca world real for us
volatile uncertain complex
and ambiguous so it begs the question
what have we done differently since 1987
to prepare for this vuca world that many
experts predicted was coming
did we teach our children differently
did we provide them with tools to make
them more resilient
did we encourage them to play to
experiment
to try and fail and try again
and to find opportunity in the midst of
chaos
i would venture to say we have not
it is estimated that 85
of the jobs that our learners today will
be doing in 2030
have not yet been invented while there
is some critique of that percentage
what can’t be disputed is the fact that
our world of work
is undergoing massive and unprecedented
change resulting from automation
and artificial intelligence while it is
true
that the jobs created by these
disruptions will exceed those that are
lost
it is not happening quickly enough
there is much to be done
we know that africa will have the
largest
workforce bigger than china or
india by 2035. by current numbers
a third of that will not be productively
engaged or have
access to the economy the political
instability
security risks mass migration and
poverty
of 300 million african
youth who are unemployed is unimaginable
and women suffer the harshest brunt of
all these challenges
so to recap we have a vuca future
that awaits us so some would argue is
here already
we have a significantly changing world
of work
and nature of job we have the largest
workforce
in the world in just 15 years and
rampant unemployment
and our continent still has some of the
highest
levels of poverty and inequality in the
world
obviously our set formulas from the past
are not working or maybe not working
quickly enough
and as has been recently said we are
preparing young people
for a world that no longer exists
so what needs to be done differently
as entrepreneurship has grown in
visibility
and coolness in the last few years
it has been marketed as the panacea for
all
our socio-economic ills my money though
is on developing not just entrepreneurs
who i
strongly believe in but generations of
entrepreneurial thinkers
democratizing this new mindset with
dynamic
young people who will have a different
lens
on the world as the world changes
and and disruptions grow and jobs are
lost it will be the entrepreneurial mind
that will seek
new and innovative ways pivoting to find
new avenues of growth and on unlocking
value in different environments
not just in business but in non-profits
governments
associations and academia
amongst others and so
to like a contagion it will spread
as professor and noted author john
spencer said
not every student will be an
entrepreneur
but they will all someday need to think
like one
so this mindset is needed to address the
challenges faced by
communities countries and continents
it is required and and bulls
competitive advantage it creates
economic access for ourselves
and others and it empowers us with
personal
agency to respond to a chaotic world and
that is why it is a human right
like air water food shelter it is a
basic need for young people
to survive and thrive in a new world
so what does this entrepreneurship
education look like
in my experience these words are used
synonymously with learning how to run
a business in schools it loosely
translates
into a market day but entrepreneurship
education
is much more than that in a study
conducted by the ellen gray orbis
foundation
with a thousand two hundred startup and
established entrepreneurs
it was found that there were fourteen
key mental attributes and competencies
they share these range from a growth
mindset
to opportunity recognition and
assessment
problem solving action orientation
adaptability resilience among others
these competencies need to be used to
identify and nurture
entrepreneurial thinking that’s the
mindset piece
the inspiration the mental agility
then comes a process to uncover a
problem
or opportunity that you care about that
you want to solve
and only after that comes
the solution comes the
a viable feasible sustainable solution
and a venture that backs it up and you
will learn how to register
and run that business you first have to
learn how to imagine
and innovate before you can implement
so how does one democratize
entrepreneurship
education i have three key
insights here firstly we need to treat
it
with the urgency it deserves as
a mission a movement for change as the
chinese wisdom goes
the best time to plant a tree was 20
years ago
the second best time is now
secondly we need to invest in
identifying and developing
entrepreneurial potential in young
people over the long term
this is not a quick fix entrepreneurship
education needs to enter the mainstream
schooling
and tertiary environment and it needs to
become a cross-cutting thread
in teaching and learning the third part
is about democratization being an act
that creates accessibility for all
so our children everywhere in cities
townships small towns rural areas
need to be given access to this kind of
education
through fun practical and relatable
activities
entrepreneurship education will be the
great equalizer
the emphasis needs to be on nurturing
a hunger for exploration for problem
solving and opportunity finding
rather than creating mental straight
jackets
problem solving you see is like gym for
the brain
and the more that you train it like with
any other muscle
the more efficient it will become the
quicker
the better it will be able to adapt and
respond and
thirdly we need to create a culture of
entrepreneurship
and entrepreneurial thinking in our
schools
in our offices and in our homes
we need to put the spotlight on
entrepreneurial
change makers as role models we need to
hear their stories
and embrace failure so that risk is
demystified
and is embraced rather than scorned at
we have worked with two young leaders um
and and they are just amazing impressive
entrepreneurs deneo and daniel were
awarded scholarships
um to do their university study
and and through their work in the
scholarship they
received entrepreneurship education
training and support
this is where they learned that
entrepreneurship can be used for the
common good
it sparked interest in them and they
found a mutual
interest in wanting to advance the
african biotech
sector so they came together to create
an entrepreneurial venture that focuses
on genomics and diagnostics and when the
covert 19 pandemic hit
these young entrepreneurs knew that they
wanted to contribute to south africa’s
response
and they developed locally produced
rapid testing kits we want to create
millions of dineos daniels
and garrett’s and it is up to us
as the adults of the day parents
teachers and concerned citizens to
create the tipping point
for this change imagine the different
worlds we could create if we were
intentional
about ensuring that every child every
african child
as early as five years old were given
access
along with their other basic rights to
entrepreneurship education
they would be unafraid to enter that
workforce
of 2035 because they would be equipped
well
they would be dreamers opportunity
seekers
critical thinkers curious agile
and resilient that entrepreneurial
spirit that we admire in steve
jobs richard mapania basitsana kumalo
and rapalang rabbana would not be the
exception
and when these young people are faced
with a year of chaos
as i was or another 2020
they would be armed and confident
to forge ahead in new and different ways
the alternative
is a future that looks much the same as
the present
except with deeper fractures and even
larger population and an even
more perilous climate as the saying goes
nothing changes if nothing changes
if we ignore the risks and the urgency
and we continue on the same trajectory
we are denying we are refusing
our children the fundamental right to be
best prepared
for a future that we as the adults of
today
and all the adults that came before us
created
and that they now need to survive and
hopefully thrive within
can we live with having denied them that
rights
thank you very much