Business Goliaths to help Namibia’s Davids

RACHEL Kaiyamo is sitting behind the desk at her shop Rachel’s Creations in the City of Windhoek’s SME Incubator Centre on Hans-Dietrich Genscher Street and points to a tiny cream-coloured box standing forlornly in the corner.

‘That is what I started my business with,’ Kaiyamo says proudly.
It turns out to be a tiny Singer sewing machine she got from her father, which allowed her to make her first ‘creations’, which she sold door to door.
She is well known for making Swapo outfits and says a lot of prominent parliamentarians and party members are her clients.
She says she would also make other parties’ colours but that she would not display them because ‘otherwise I lose my [Swapo] customers’.
Kaiyambo says the Incubator Centre has helped her with business mentoring and with getting larger premises as her business expanded.
She says one problem has been a lack of marketing, as ‘not even taxi drivers’ know about the centre.
Situated a few shops down from Rachel’s Creations is Benjamin Kasuto’s Speedy Solar Solutions, which sells, install and maintains solar geysers, solar pumps and even solar traffic lights.
The solar traffic lights are currently on trial in Gobabis and might be spreading throughout Namibia if the trial proves to be successful and Kasuto says a logical extension might be to start having solar-powered street lights.
The company sells solar equipment to Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique, according to Kasuto, and it currently has three offices with nine employees.
He says being at the centre has helped with visibility, as before he was just ‘one company among many’.
‘At least people know where the Incubator Centre is,’ he said.
While these companies are promising starts for Namibia’s SME sector, a new trust formed with private-sector companies and the Incubation Centre could take things even further.
The centre is an initiative of the City of Windhoek and was set up at a cost of N$11 million.
It mandate is to help small and medium enterprises with issues such as business counselling, infrastructure and business space, mentoring, business seminars and access to information technology.
It is a veritable case of Goliath helping David as a string of local companies have committed themselves to helping SMEs through the SME Incubator Centre Trust.
SMEs should receive a major boost from commitments from such established Namibian companies and organisations as Pupkewitz Holdings, the Namibian Manufacturers’ Association, the Development Bank and the Joint Consultative Council.
At the official launch of the Trust, prominent local businessman Ben Hauwanga of B & H Motor Spares shared his first forays into business.
‘I started with fifty cents when I was eleven years old,’ he said.
‘I bought sweets from a shop that was five kilometres away and sold them at my school.’
Hauwanga said one of the main problems with Namibian entrepreneurs is that they spend the money they make from business on luxury items.
‘Rather sit on plastic chairs until your time comes,’ he said.
The centre’s objective is to grow companies until they are ready to enter the formal sector.
Companies like Rachel’s Creations and Speedy Solar Solutions have one year until they have to leave the safe confines of the centre.
Both Kaiyambo and Kasuto are hopeful that the new Trust will help them in their business strivings.
The Trust’s responsibilities include managing its assets, assisting employees to run the centre efficiently and ensuring that the centre is sustainable and profitable.
Marketing, a key concern of many of the shop owners at the centre, is a key aspect of the Trust’s duties and the centre’s management hopes to see it grow into a brand known throughout Namibia.