Exploring the role of singatha incubation centre in promoting youth entrepreneuship.

Abstract

The government and the private sector together have introduced incubation centres to boost entrepreneurship development amongst the youth, creating jobs, reducing unemployment and building wealth by promoting new businesses. The impact of the incubation centres and their mileage in assisting young entrepreneurs is indispensable. However, the types of service offerings, policies, and tools available within these centres have never been established. This study seeks to influence the discourse around incubation centres as an institutional vehicle to promote local economic development and youth entrepreneurship in South Africa. This study focuses on the business incubation programme and youth entrepreneurship with the broad aims of assessing the role played by incubation centres in providing support to the young entrepreneurs in the incubation centres, and assessing the activities within these incubation centres, as well as their successes, failures and challenges. The researcher chose a qualitative research method to do a thematic analysis and determine the complexity of incubation centres in relation to youth entrepreneurship and how incubation centres assist young entrepreneurs in growing their businesses. The qualitative research method assisted the researcher in answering the research questions using both respondents’ experiences and data from the literature. Qualitative research was chosen as an appropriate method to be used for this research as it normally used to obtain the meaning and an understanding of the phenomenon by an individual or a group. The data was collected and analysed from the interviews, and documents to gather information from and in exploring the role played by Singata Incubation Centre in assisting young entrepreneurs. Respondents who participated in the study work for Singatha Incubation Centre and individuals with a direct interest in the area's development. The methods were selected because the researcher intended to discover the participants‟ approaches, opinions, and feelings to provide a rich description from the investigation. The main finding indicate that incubation models seem to be effective, although they are engulfed by changes, most of which emanate from their sustainability and funding. This suggest that government should, through the relevant authorities, monitor existing incubation centres and ensure their sustainability by providing financial support, especially for incubation centres that have contributed to creating sustainable businesses over a considerable period. The findings also suggest that a link should be established between the key local economic sector and the local incubator. Incubation centres should focus mostly on businesses that provide services linked to key local economic sectors.