STEVEN ZWANE | Young women in SA don’t need more inspiration, they need a way forward

Every young woman I have worked with seems to carry an idea. Not necessarily a registered business with a logo, staff or a VAT number. Just an idea.

Beneath these stories lies a question many young women carry quietly: Can someone like me really build something of my own? That is a vital Women’s Month question. Not whether South African women are ambitious, but whether their ambition has somewhere to go.

She joined a youth entrepreneurship programme while at school, but entrepreneurship was not her obvious destination. She studied accounting and finance, then entered a corporate career. Years later, a friend asked her to help improve his business.

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Amanda discovered she was good at diagnosing problems, creating order and helping a business work better. That favour eventually became her own consulting business. Her journey did not begin with a dramatic decision to “become an entrepreneur”.

It emerged slowly. The future became believable before it became a business. Her story matters because we often treatentrepreneurshipas an instant outcome.

A young person attends a programme, pitches an idea and graduates. Then we ask: Did she start a company? Bonke earned money from a sip-and-paint side hustle, but university, limited resources and fear of failure slowed her journey.

Mapula became an engineer and project manager while experimenting with side hustles; financial literacy made her, in her words, the most financially knowledgeable person in her family. Thandiswa works in marketing while building a digital agency that has paused and restarted. None followed a straight line.

That is precisely the point. After more than two decades of working with young people, one lesson has stayed with me: very few young women say they lack ideas. Many say, directly or indirectly, that they are waiting.

Waiting until they finish studying. Until they have saved enough. Until they gain experience.

Until someone takes them seriously. Until they feel ready.

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