Ido Lekota
“The loudest one in the room is the weakest one.’ Denzel Washington said that in the movie ”American Gangster“, where he was trying to explain how he had tons of problems when showing off (being loud) and very few problems when he wasn’t showing off
Last Thursday, 36-year-old social entrepreneur Zakheni Ngubo used the familiar phrase at a Leungo Edutrain Management team “lessons learnt" event.
Leungo is a MICT Seta-accredited institution offering training for unemployed graduates in employment-ready skills.
Ngubo’s usage of the familiar saying was in response to a member of his audience who asked, “What is the biggest misconception about entrepreneurship?” In his response, Ngubo went to great lengths to show that real entrepreneurship is not about those whose so-called success is splashed across social media platforms – where consumers flash their lives, driven by conspicuous consumption.
For Zakheni, the biggest misconception about entrepreneurship is shown by the behaviour of those who, for example, buy a Ferrari and or Maserati to impress people who do not know them in the first place and may even hate them, for that matter.
Ngubo is the epitome of the kind of entrepreneur this country urgently needs. He is an innovator and disruptor, also an entrepreneur with a social conscience. He is, for example, the founder of Siyafunda Digital Library and Kelo.
Siyafunda is an educational platform created to address the shortage of textbooks, maths and science teachers in townships and rural areas by creating digital libraries that allow schools to connect to curriculum-aligned content through free Wi-Fi. Ngubo started the company by capitalising on the country’s high mobile usage rate.
The same principle is applied in Kelo, a digital platform partnering with publishers to make learning material for higher education students accessible at affordable prices.
During his talk, Ngubo explained that the two businesses were establishe, based on his experience learning in a township, where he faced three key challenges: language barriers, patchy academic support and teachers lacking confidence.
In his working life, when he joined Virgin Mobile, he then researched how he could capitalise on the country’s high mobile penetration rate to address these shortcomings – hence his start up of Siyafunda Digital library and subsequently Kelo.
These two ventures may be innovative and disruptive, but most importantly, they also have a social impact based on a market-related business model. And this explains Ngubo – is what drives him.
The need to use technology to improve the quality of those who do not enjoy the maximum benefits of living in a democratic society is based on the concept of social justice because of their social standing.
Interacting with Ngubo, one realises that some key traits make him the disruptor and innovator he is proving to be. These include tons of self-knowledge, intent, and dollops of social consciousness.
Listening to him speak, one understands why Ngubo is the kind of social entrepreneur this country needs.
Because of the socio-economic realities of an unequal society that we need the kind of entrepreneurs who – as he does – have market-driven principles to solve social and environmental issues. This, while balancing their revenue growth with a motivation to impact the communities they operate positively.
Ngubo's commitment to the disruption led him, for example, to come up with a model that challenges the notion that digitalisation is a threat to the publishing industry. Through Kelo he partners with publishers who load their books (11 000 so far) on his digital platform, thereby continuing to earn revenue. This is proving to be an environmentally sustainable solution when it comes to reducing the printing costs for publishers.
Ngubo's story calls for businesses in this country to redirect their energies to impact investment – investment intended to generate measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside financial – beyond the much punted corporate social investment.
Lekota is a former Sowetan Political Editor