BY PHESHEYA IAN KUNENE
MBABANE – Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) has continued to find ways to provide the youth with demand-driven, sustainable, and high quality training that support their entry into entrepreneurship.
This as the RSTP Acting CEO Dr Andile Metfula emphasized their commitment to supporting the youth’s creativity and innovation in various domains. Metfula affirmed that investing in youth was crucial for the future and achieving growth and development goals.
Metfula shared this sentiments during the second edition of the Umliba Youth Entrepreneurship Conference which was held at the George Hotel last Friday. RSTP partnered with Youth Enterprise Fund (YERF) to host the conference. The event attracted a high number of ambitious young people aspiring to be game changers in the entrepreneurship space.
“As RSTP, we remain committed to playing a crucial role in the empowerment of the youth not only with technical skills, but also supporting them toward venturing into entrepreneurship. RSTP understands the needs of the youth, which is why we saw the need to partner with Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund for such a conference for the youth,” Metfula said while delivering his speech.
Metfula explained the primary reason they opted for the partnership with YERF.
“We understand the importance of collaboration towards supporting the very innovative youth of Eswatini to flourish in entrepreneurship. we thank our parent ministries for allowing us to join hands as the two public enterprises particularly because we strongly believe that this partnership will showcase the power of collaboration even to the youth that we are all about today for the country to develop its economy and attain its goal of attaining first world status, the youth has a huge role to play, not just as participants but as leaders in the economic development of the kingdom,” he said.
Metfula highlighted the importance of technology in the entrepreneurship space. He said they were happy that the youth has realised that while being entrepreneurial, they cannot leave technology
behind as the world is now being driven by technology in all sectors. He added that Eswatini cannot be left behind in the new era of artificial intelligence, big data and internet of things even in the business sector.
“We strongly believe that if we empower the youth to go into entrepreneurship, we also need to ensure that we create an ecosystem that allows them to grow. that we can do through creating a market for their products and services as that will allow for them to grow and reach a level where they can also help others. that way, we would have succeeded in creating a group of locally grown community of investors or even venture capitalists,” the Acting CEO added.
RSTP has launched initiatives and programmes to encourage youth to contribute to national projects and contribute their ideas, paving the way for innovation and leadership.
