Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management (ETDs)

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    A creative business venture to promote youth development in townships
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Ngidi, Tebogo Lorna; Venter, Robert
    From the apartheid era up until the current state, unemployment has been a challenge in South Africa, especially amongst the young people in underprivileged townships (Hodge, 2009). To try and redress this, profit and non-profit sectors have undertaken a mixture of commercialised and social tasks to respond to changes that occur within the economic and social contexts (Social Enterprise Alliance , 2021). Such tasks include start-up businesses, interactive technologies and constantly evolving demographics that try to reach different aspects of life (Social Enterprise Alliance , 2021). It is through such convergences that social entrepreneurships were established. This social entrepreneurship project investigates whether a more creative business venture can assist with regards to promoting youth development in townships. According to Venter and Urban (2015), government support on its own is not enough to meet societal demands. This is more especially with regards to wicked problems that tend to be more complex to tackle due to its interlocked nature with other issues. Even though social entrepreneurship operates in diverse realms within the community, for the context of this research paper, this project investigates the introduction of newer and more creative business ventures within the Southwest Townships (SOWETO), a township that accommodates close to half of the Gauteng population. The report draws on the findings from reviewed literature and interviews with various stakeholders; entrepreneurs (both new and established), community support institutions and the local government.
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    The deployment of platform businesses in the township economy: a focus on spaza shops in Soweto
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Deokaran, Ruwaan
    The purpose of this study was to understand how the township economy is leveraging off platform businesses to make them more profitable and deliver on customer needs more easily and conveniently. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with 10 entrepreneurs operating spaza shops in Soweto (a township in South Africa) were conducted. Findings showed that the use of platform technologies has put SA spaza shop owners in a better position to access financial support. The study also found that spaza owners were now better equipped to track their inventory and thus prevent any losses, thus experiencing greater overall profitability. Given that most South African spaza shop entrepreneurs operate on limited budgets and face stiff competition from foreign owned spaza shops, the greatest value of this research is that it not only confirms the adequacy of platform technologies in the spaza shop sector, but it also shows that adoption of platform technologies results in competitive advantage and strategic opportunities