There are very few spaces in which I can be myself and in which I am understood. There are very few people who dream as outrageously and courageously as I do. There are very few places I call home. The Allan Gray Orbis Foundation is one of them.

Jamboree is an annual opportunity for Candidate Fellows from all provinces to come together for an intense weekend of entrepreneurial and self-leadership development. Initially, each year group attends separate sessions designed to fulfill the specific objectives of their stage of the Fellowship journey. The theme for Year Explore is Future Focus – in part a reminder that it is time to start thinking about the future and in part a reminder that, no matter who you are and where you come from, your dreams are valid and you should not let them shrink in the face of adversity. The Candidate Fellows dedicate two full days to introspection and developing their future plans (yes, it is as daunting as it sounds) and are provided with expansive support and guidance from a number of inspiring sources.

This is a general trend at Jamboree. The Foundation, true to its belief in the value of mentorship, organises talks from various entrepreneurs who share their stories with Candidate Fellows in the hope of inspiring them to take the “Road Less Travelled”. This year, we were incredibly fortunate to listen to a diverse range of experiences, from Jabu Stone to Mthunzi Mdwaba and Toni Glass.

Though invaluable to hear such enlivening stories, these narratives often highlight the glamour of entrepreneurship. By contrast, the pitching process and Open Space sessions illuminate some of the risk and resilience that go into making that (apparent) glamour a reality. Candidate Fellows are given the opportunity to pitch their ideas to the entire Fellowship community (are you noticing a daunting trend?) and receive feedback from fellow Fellows and the esteemed Entrepreneurial Leadership Officers.

This year I took the plunge and decided to pitch in the Wildcard Pitches. Though the 30 seconds raced past faster than my heartbeat at the time, I am so glad that I put myself out there. The feedback that I received from the Fellowship community was both constructive and encouraging; I found myself marvelling at the talent in the room. As someone who is naturally and ferociously competitive, I have struggled to open myself up to criticism, for fear of seeming slightly less competent than I present myself to be. Jamboree is a reminder of the immense value of collaboration and that if we want to go far, we must go together.

They say that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. If I am the average of any five Candidate Fellows, I count myself so lucky.

Nicole Dunn, Year Explore, 3^rd Year BSocSci PPE at UCT
Bio: I am an ambitious woman with an insatiable appetite for challenge and adrenaline. My passion for people and deep-seated commitment to social activism shapes my aspirations, interpersonal relations and outlook on life. As someone with an entrepreneurial and leadership mindset, I seek out opportunities for improvement wherever I am involved, and hope to contribute to a more equal, socially-just Africa.

The Brightest Young Minds (BYM) experience was one of the highlights of my year. The brand “Brightest Young Minds” triggered anxieties in me as I anticipated a crowd of lively and robust young people from across Africa. And that is exactly what I got, minus the anxieties, of course. It came as no surprise for me to find among the BYM delegates Candidate Allan Gray Fellows and graduated Allan Gray Fellows – they were easy to recognise and relate to. In my mind the summit became a blueprint of high-impact connectivity that enabled young people from many countries to come together under one roof to discuss continental issues and imminent feasible solutions to “shape the future – the now” as was the theme.

Fundamental to the theme of the summit was the National Development Plan (NDP) of South Africa. This key document was broadly discussed by a panel that included the Head of Planning, NDP Government official. The highlight of this discussion was the issue around transformation and how GDP could be strengthened by it, given that everyone was driven towards that common goal. I believe this panel activated all the delegates, proving the value of cohesion towards transforming our economies across Africa.

It was not only the delegates that were in the spotlight. There were also well known individuals such as Stephen Van Coller, who fired up the summit from day one. One could also draw inspiration from the likes of Rudi Kruger, who, in my opinion, has rare, deep and revolutionary ideas about innovation. The CEO of Index Innovation discussed the need for disruptions in the technology sectors and how one can take control of such spaces. He emphasised the power of independent thinking and how it leads to disrupting industries – these insights I valued the most.

I believe all delegates, including me responded positively to all the insights shared by the various speakers. A case in point was how these fundamental truths were translated into our group’s business idea. Our idea was pretty much about creating synergy and linking what some of the group members were already doing. We managed to link a Candidate Allan Gray Fellow’s project in rural farming communities with the expertise of a young Kenyan commercial farmer.

We pitched our idea to a panel that included staff from Barclays Africa Group and came third. Later on we also presented it to the Minister in the Presidency – Honourable Jeff Radebe. Not only did our idea come third at BYM event, we also received promises of Agricultural Division support from Barclays Africa Group; an incubator, Awethu Project; and the Government of South Africa to help us move our idea forward.

Our idea opened up possibilities for partnerships and future collaborations between delegates from other African countries. This is a much needed interface in the current economic show-off – a collective effort and treaty among young African entrepreneurs.

Benjamin Shaw meeting Roelof Botha

The aim of the trip was to expose South African entrepreneurs to the most cutting-edge companies, incubators, venture capital investors (VCs) and hi-tech startups from the Valley. The trip was also an opportunity for us as entrepreneurs to establish new global business relationships. Our group had the opportunity to engage with startup founders, angel investors, venture capital funds and multinationals and we made many connections. Key to deriving value from the trip was the open way in which founders and VCs answered questions and the clarity with which they described the differences in South African and American funding environments. A big takeaway was that founding teams should be focusing on operations and not fundraising – a big problem in our local context.

This trip also focused on the conditions enabling Silicon Valley to be arguably the centre of global technological innovation. While I truly believe that pound-for-pound we ought to have no inferiority complex in comparing to many of the startups we met on the trip, it is clear that the environment for startups is vastly different overseas. The good news is that as success stories come from Africa, more capital will make its way to our shores.

From meetings with Roelof Botha and Bill Draper to sessions hosted by Facebook and Google, there were multiple lessons to be learnt and much wisdom shared. I would encourage all Fellows who have tech-enabled businesses to seriously consider applying to this programme. It is both an entrepreneurial and personal journey of discovery and has provided new networks, new friends and new advice.

Some Valley lessons worth sharing:

• Venture Capitalists want to see scale in terms of decreasing unit costs and unique IP.
• Don’t think of your business concerns in terms of paying rent for the next month, but rather how you’ll expand in the next decade.
• Pivots / iterations on your business model should always be data driven.
• Grow a pipeline of add-on services or products that you could branch into before you choose which you actually go out to build.
• Spend time building tracking metrics before your business goes live so as to accurately monitor your successes and/or failures.
• Your funders should see growth as being more important than profit. If they don’t, disengage.
• Build a fantastic team, early.
• Dilute your ownership for growth capital – if you’re not growing you’re not working hard enough.
• Companies don’t have to go global to be great.

Over the years I have started leaning towards the philosophy that dictates, “if it does not have meaning, it is not worth doing”. The more I exercise this, the more I find that I experience greater fulfilment in all that I do.  I also no longer experience a separation between one area of my life and another since my values are not in conflict with my lifestyle. Rather my life feels whole because everything I do speaks to my values and thus it all ties together. This is the reason I chose the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation.

Just over 2 years ago I made a decision to leave the United States, where I resided for 24 years, along with my sons to explore a new life in my country of origin. This was not an easy decision, but it resonated with me. I felt the need to make a contribution to my country after being blessed with tremendous exposure in the US, as a student, a working professional and an entrepreneur.

After my return I took my time to settle in. My values called for it and it was well worth it because a year and a half later, I came across the Allan Gray Orbis opportunity and knew it was the right place for me. I have been amazed by the values, passion and resources that the Foundation invests in South Africa’s youth and I feel extremely optimistic and enthusiastic about the future of our youth. Mentorship is a crucial step that helps to usher our youth into the next phase of their personal and professional lives and I am honoured to serve the Foundation in the capacity of Mentor Manager.

My dream for South Africa is to see more organisations and individuals establishing and investing in programmes that benefit our youth in a similar fashion as Mr Gray did. The future belongs to the youth and we must do everything necessary to empower them.

What is the state of entrepreneurship education in the world today? To answer this question would be straight forward if the field of entrepreneurship education was in harmony about what content needs to be taught, how it needs to be taught and in what format or channel it needs to be delivered through. Indeed, these pedagogical challenges are at the core of many entrepreneurship centres in Europe, East Asia, the United States of America and Africa. In order to better address pedagogical issues practitioners will have to co-create terminological commonalities and general principles.

If anything the 14th European Entrepreneurship Colloquium (EEC), organised by the European Forum for Entrepreneurship Research (EFER) and co-chaired by Harvard Business School and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was set up to do exactly that. The legendary Dr Berth Twaalfhoven’s organisation (EFER) did this remarkably by amassing 57 practitioners from 26 countries across Europe, Asia, the US and Africa. These practitioners represented 46 entrepreneurship institutions over 6 days between Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management locations in July 2016. The EEC 2016 goals were to enhance entrepreneurship course and programme design across various curricula; provide a better understanding of the role and operation of labs, incubators and accelerators in entrepreneurship education; provide insights of growth, scalability, financing and management of dynamic enterprises; and finally enhance the use of participant-centred action learning case teaching skills.

“Go to any business school in the world and ask economists what ‘marginal costs’ are and you will find a consistent answer,” argued Bill Aulet, the author of the ground breaking disciplined entrepreneurship book and co-chair of EEC 2016. Bill’s argument and motivation for writing the book was inspired in part by the laissez-faire approach to teaching entrepreneurship that seem to characterise the field. The book was an attempt to professionalise and put some structure to entrepreneurship education. The need for disciplining the field is best illustrated by a graph that he presented below. It highlights the fact that the demand for entrepreneurship is very high while the quality of supply is inconsistent.

Figure 1: Demand versus quality supply of EE Source: Bill Aulet, MIT

Among other key takeaways was the observation made by Prof. Tom Eisenmann that entrepreneurship education is moving online. Harvard Business School was experimenting with this with a few business courses. The big idea here was to create blended teaching by finding the right balance between online and classroom-based learning.

So what does all this mean for practitioners in South Africa? One of the key learnings for me was the need for entrepreneurship practitioners to work and collaborate with stakeholders in the ecosystem. Indeed, the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) and SeedStars Indices for 2016 rated the South African entrepreneurial ecosystems as the best in the continent. Organisations teaching entrepreneurship education need to work collaboratively to strengthen the ecosystem and maximise impact. South Africa needs eChampions who will promote and celebrate strategic collaborations in this space.

The following insights that came from Prof. Willis Emmons, Bill Aulet, Prof. Joe Lassiter, Prof. Walter Kuemmerle and Prof. Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management are what I consider useful takeaways for South African practitioners to ponder on:

• Create an environment that welcomes entrepreneurs. Use the mantra “come in, we’re open!”
• Refuse the temptation of using off-the-shelf pedagogy. Instead, take into account the kind of 
businesses students want to create and how fast they want to create them.
• Engage entrepreneurs with the community.
• Design programmes that will answer the student’s question: how will what I learn today, help
me do things better in my business tomorrow?
• Think landscape, engagements, output and impact in programme design.
• Finally, bridge the “Knowing-Doing-Being” gap. 
Balancing the above pedagogical issues with the ecosystem needs can legitimise entrepreneurship education.


Phumlani Nkontwana practices entrepreneurship education at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation and the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa. In his private capacity he runs a small but dedicated management consultancy working directly with entrepreneurs to provide growth-orientated solutions for startups and small businesses. 


August 2016: The Foundation is of the firm belief that high impact, responsible entrepreneurs will contribute to a positive economic, social and political change by providing access to education and entrepreneurial development. Their inaugural accelerator programme aims to rapidly scale up nine selected entrepreneurial ventures founded by Allan Gray Fellows. These businesses have evolved through a four month iterative process based on lean startup concepts and the Lean Iterator methodology – a process where startups’ refine and validate their ideas with real audiences, making the necessary adjustments to ensure a sustainable business.

The Foundation started this initiative to assist Fellows move from idea mode into action a business startup – research suggests that this is the most difficult and volatile stage of choosing to run a business. Most people stagnate in idea mode and many start-ups fail in the initial stages due to a lack of support and market access. The next phase of this accelerator, launched in Cape Town on 1 September 2016.

The accelerator programme will change the future of nine Fellows who have founded, innovative enterprises intending to impact the South African startup landscape. This, accelerator has been developed by the Foundation in collaboration with E² and Cactus Advisors supported by Standard Bank Future Labs.

There are nine businesses that were chosen from 30 ideas, these included:

• AKAN – all natural hair and skin care product range catering to the black natural hair care market. akanorganics.co.za. Business owners: Akosua Koranteng
• The GradSpace – Graduate recruitment made easy – an exclusive network for top performing university students. Business owners: Apoti Potye and Zanele Malumba
• Chicco’s Barbers – a franchise that provides a tech-enabled turnkey system to optimise the hair-cutting process, allowing barbers to generate more revenue and operate more professionally. Business owners: Muzi Mthombeni and Thabo Ngcobo
• HouseMe – connects prospective tenants to landlords of residential accommodation. HouseME allows tenants to bid on what they are willing to pay for a rental and is backed by a dual-sided rating system similar to Uber or Airbnb. houseme.co.za. Business owners: Ben Shaw and Kyle Bradley.
• Incitech – making simple diagnostic solutions accessible for insightful and actionable information where and when it matters. incitech.co.za. Business owners: Danisa Nkuna and team
• Map Blitz – an educational, fun and engaging new brand of the world map puzzles with a time challenge. mapblitz.com. Business owners: Wandile Mabanga
• Parktown – a CT-based clothing brand which aims to remove a customer’s need to try on clothes before purchasing them. All clothing created by Parktown is made-to-measure and assembled locally. https://www.facebook.com/parktownclothing/ Business owners: Zara Hammerschlag and Tamryn Smit.
• Rooster– alarm app that seeks to change the way people wake up in the morning. Business owners: Dom Koenig and Josh Perry.
• Scoody – manufactures and distributes a custom garment called the Scoody (Scarf-Hoody) to corporates, sporting brands, schools, societies, events and promotions companies, and individuals. scoody.co.za. Business owners: Sechaba Selialia.

These businesses have evolved through the four month iterative IVC process based on lean startup concepts and the Lean Iterator methodology – a process where startups’ refine and validate their ideas with real audiences, making the necessary adjustments to ensure a sustainable business. The Creation leg of the programme will run for 13 weeks, from the 1^st of September to 30^th of November 2016 at the Standard Bank Future Labs centre in Cape Town. The founders of these startups’ will be immersed in an intensive programme to rapidly expand their businesses, they will be exposed to mentorship by leading business experts in various industries, insights from target audiences in both consumer and business, strategy development and pitch coaching.

The accelerator enables the selected businesses to rapidly scale up through a structured programme that provides content workshops, business mentors, industry leaders, influencers and experts, in addition to founder-friendly funding. E² will provide initial funding support to the ventures and at the conclusion of the program; ventures will be eligible for follow-on funding and support.  The nine businesses that complete the program will present the milestones, demos and learnings on the 1st of December 2016.

The Foundation would like to take this opportunity to celebrate the brave Fellows that have taken the first step to starting a business.

Global Entrepreneurship Week is the world’s largest celebration of the innovators and job-creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare. The global event is anchored by five specific themes: Youth, Women, Cities, Scale-Ups and Investors.

This year the Association of Allan Gray Fellows curated a multi-city experience of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). The experience was called Imbizo Junction, so named for its focus on gathering like minds in the same spaces in the city.

In the spirit of connecting to the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem and strengthening the networks and opportunities for our Fellows, the Association mapped entrepreneurial events that took place during GEW in both Johannesburg and Cape Town. The aim was to map a diverse range of events across the five themes and to encourage Fellows and their own social networks to become “entrepreneurial explorers” in their cities.

To this end, the Association produced the Imbizo Junction site – which provided a Fellow-curated event guide that could make entrepreneurial explorations easier and more trusted both for Fellows and the general public. For a first version of this initiative, the site was a hit – 31 000 hits to be exact.

Fellows Nkgopoleng Moloi and Adhila Mayet hosted another successful Talk Series JHB on the topic of “Intersectionality in Entrepreneurship”. It was great to see a Fellow-run event on the GEW map. The Association wrapped up GEW with a pitching competition in which Fellows had the opportunity to win seed funding by submitting a business pitch via social media. Candidate Fellow Foyinsola Ogunrombi had the winning pitch and received R5000 to activate her idea.

With the Global Entrepreneurship Conference (GEC) coming up in March 2017, we look forward to getting more Fellow-run events and businesses on the map.

Carol Nonhlanhla Gajana accepted the position of Events and Logistics Coordinator at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation because of her passion for managing events and her love for working with young people. These two skills have also come in handy in the business she started a little more than a year ago.

Team Asijiki, meaning the team for whom there is no turning back, came about as a result of Carol’s personal weight loss journey. “My wakeup call came after a Wellness Assessment day at work,” says Carol. She was shocked to realise that her weight was the same as when she was pregnant two years earlier in 2011. “I realised right there and then that time for excuses had come to an end.”

Soon after her wakeup call Carol started following the healthy lifestyle community on Facebook called SleekGeek. Between January and October of 2014 she managed to lose 6.8kg by cutting out bread, pap, rice and cereals. This was a good start, but she realised that to lose weight faster she would have to commit to the programme 100%. She decided to start SleekGeek Reboot on 3 November 2014. Besides changing her eating habits, she also took to daily exercising before work and in the evenings. Since then she has lost 40kg and now weighs a light 80kg.

Carol’s coordinating skills came to the fore when she started recruiting ladies at work to form part of an accountability group. Twelve ladies joined and met during lunch times for walks or Zumba and Taebo sessions in a meeting room. Her endeavours were recognised by the HR department and she was awarded the title of Ambassador of Healthy Living in the Workplace. Because she had to lead by example, she couldn’t afford to fall off the wagon.

Before long Carol started a second accountability group – this time for her friends. “I created a WhatsApp group and called it Team Asijiki. We posted what we ate and drank for all meals as well as what we did as exercise. The team quickly grew from 10 to 31 ladies from all across South Africa. These ladies had a particularly hard time cutting out starch; they were mostly Xhosa or Zulu ladies whose traditional food consisted of starch, starch and more starch. However, being part of Team Asijiki, they managed to soldier on.

The WhatsApp group eventually morphed into a Facebook group that is now 70 000 members strong. The next natural step was turning Team Asijiki into a business brand. So far she has appointed group administrators who champion team spirit through numerous WhatsApp accountability groups, she’s facilitated workshops across South Africa, she’s been interviewed on numerous radio stations and TV programmes, she’s opened the Team Asijiki Health Shop in Khayelitsha and she’s gotten the buy-in from Dis-Chem Pharmacies. After noticing an increase in sales Dis-Chem agreed to put ‘Asijiki Friendly’ labels on all the products they use. Asijiki packs are also couriered to members in towns that have no Dis-Chem, like Umthatha, Queenstown and Limpopo.

Team Asijiki’s 8 week Weight-Loss Challenge has been launched to get everyone ready for Summer 2016. Joining costs R549 and it includes a Reboot Success guide delivered to your doorstep, free exercise plans and a chance to win cash prizes ranging from R4 000 to R10 000 for losing the most weight. Those revellers who prefer enjoying the silly season and starting afresh in January have the option of paying a R100 fee for a 30-day programme that includes coaching on eating clean and exercising as well as regular weigh-ins and lots of group motivation.

Given the success of Team Asijiki, Carol’s expertise is no longer limited to just weight loss. Her advice to budding entrepreneurs who don’t know where to start, is:

1. Know yourself; identify the problems and issues that you want to improve upon.
2. Do different things so you can find what you enjoy – then it will be sustainable.
3. See who else is in the same boat as you and form a forum.
4. See what the demand is and act on it quickly.

While Laaiqah Taliep, a Grade 12 learner at St Cyprian’s School for Girls and Allan Gray Scholar, is technically no longer a babe, she’s sharing wisdom that is well beyond her years. A video she recently created to promote awareness about water misuse and its effect on climate change has already garnered 4 000 views and is likely to continue doing so.

A lot of technical skill and empathetic understanding went into creating Laaiqah’s very poignant animation. It’s clear that she appreciates what’s at stake when even one drop of water is wasted. Coming from Maitland, Cape Town, a humble community that is rife with poverty and unemployment, Laaiqah has had first-hand experience of poverty. “I believe that my experiences have moulded me into the compassionate and empathetic individual I am,” she explains.

The inspiration for becoming a water activist came from her belief that a lack of water is the root cause of poverty. Water is the basis of all life; without water we face problems such a food scarcity, which leads to malnutrition and the hindrance of the productivity of a nation. “I felt it was my obligation to promote awareness. As a young person with the privilege of opportunity I felt it was necessary to take advantage of the power I hold, whether or not it be on a small scale.”

She wants her video to highlight not only the problems surrounding water scarcity and pollution but also how humankind is ironically responsible for the issues causing our world to suffer. “I believe we lack the empathy and awareness required to affect change. My video is, therefore, emotive and hopefully moves its audience enough to obligate them to make a difference.”

In addition to all the views it has received on Facebook, the video has also been promoted on the CIFF organisation’s Twitter page and website as well as on the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation’s blog. “The video has received a larger audience than I could have ever imagined, and for that I feel truly blessed.” She has also managed to promote it within her school and schools in the vicinity as well as in her home community. The positive comments she’s received so far signals a great future for this video and the many more she plans to create.

Laaiqah started a YouTube channel so that she could upload the video and make it more accessible. She hopes that her message will reach many more around the world. The plan is to upload many more videos that will focus not only water awareness but on many other issues our world is faced with. She also plans on sending the video to more schools in Cape Town and then creating a campaign called One Drop; she wants the youth to get involved. “I hope to inspire more youth to make a difference … I strongly believe that the possibility of change lies within our future leaders.” If Laaiqah Taliep is anything to go by, our country will soon have gems coming more oft out of the mouths of more babes.