ECITI, the Eastern Cape ICT hub, is to target ICT graduates with an entrepreneurial attitude, in an effort to retain the more than 200 graduates who are trained in the province annually and who subsequently leave for greener pastures.

The initiative, which will get underway in earnest next year once it has secured premises, has completed the groundwork of, amongst others, formalising its business plan as well as establishing the Section 21 company.

In essence, the hub is to house up to numerous ICT ventures of which eight will be emerging entrepreneurs.

Oliva Zake from Imara Consulting, a black youth owned entity, adds her support to the initiative: “With the threat of the digital divide growing ever wider, this initiative could not have come at a better time.”

Support will be in the form of being a central contact point for industry information, matching SMMEs with partners and customers, providing business strategy advice, mentorship and coaching and facilitating funding.

Bill Brander, ECITI project manager, says it is the latter that is one of the two major challenges that face young entrepreneurs who want to make a start in this industry.

Consequently, ECITI is putting in place a robust entrepreneurial support programme (ESP), based upon the successful ECDC model, which addresses this and other challenges.

The ESP coordinator, who is yet to be appointed, will assist in accessing finance from funds such as The DTI Competitiveness Fund locally as well as those available globally.

The other challenge – developing consummate business skills – will also be addressed by the ESP coordinator. ECITI is currently talking to the Service SETA to access their “small venture creation learnership”.

Zake says “the programme should provide the Eastern Cape’s young ICT talent, with the opportunity of being groomed into entrepreneurs.”

The project appears to have caught the imagination of many as Brander says that there is no shortage of interest in the project. In the past months, he has kept tertiary educational institutions in the region abreast of developments in the hub. The heads of departments are enthusiastic and are sending worthy projects and students to ECITI for consideration.

Furthermore, three incubates have shown interest and one international ICT company is very serious about becoming involved. This success is recognition that the province has three critical elements for success – the human resources as developed by the province’s premier universities, a solid business infrastructure as well as entrepreneurial flair.

He reiterates ECITI is not intent on dividing the provincial pie up and cites the East London-based Freshmark and Real People company examples.

In the latter’s case, Real People has seen remarkable growth in the past five years and now derives 70 per cent of its business from outside EC.

“We see IT as one of our main strengths and integral to our growth from a 200-person operation to one that now employs well in excess of 700. Our call centre is one of the largest in the province with over 150 operators. In the new year, we are likely to double this number to accommodate for growth in our business,” says Real People MD Johan van Rooyen.

“Job creation is job creation,” says Brander. “While jobs in the core activity may start off slowly, it needs to employ more people not always necessarily in that business’ core activity. Support services such as admin are required sometime and this creates other jobs,” adds Brander.

The ECITI initiative is speared by a board of advisors which comprising 11 of the province’s top ICT players. They are ECITI chairperson who is the province’s CIO in the Office of the Premier Luca Fanicchi, Umama IT Skills Development’s Nomadelo Sauli, ECDC’s Abu Abdullatief and Prakash Odhav, Usango Technologies’ Sydwell Maqula, DaimlerChrysler’s Kees Barnhoorn, ISETT SETA’s Nkosinathi Ngxata, Freshmark Systems’ Dave Larkin, Dimension Data’s Benedict Khohliso and First Technologies’ Doug Copeland. It also includes ECITI’s Bill Brander.