Geneva, 18 October 2011 - The 18th Directors Meeting of EMPRETEC, the entrepreneurship programme in developing countries supported by UNCTAD, will take place in Pretoria, South Africa, from 18 to 21 October 2011, bringing together entrepreneurs from across Africa and centre directors of 22 countries, including Benin, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mozambique and Brazil.
Organized in cooperation with EMPRETEC´s regional partner, the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA), this meeting will provide a platform to exchange best practices, discuss job creation through entrepreneurship and strengthen the network between the 32 EMPRETEC centres. On the agenda: future steps for regional EMPRETEC Forums in Africa and Latin America.
In addition to the meeting, participants will take part in a one-day study tour to visit SEDA´s premises and its business incubator for information and communication technology start-ups, and EgoliBio, a SEDA business incubator specialized in biosciences products.
On this study tour, participants will have the chance to explore business opportunities in South Africa and beyond. SEDA, established in 2004 under the South African Department of Trade and Industry, provides business development and support services for small enterprises.
In parallel to the directors meeting, a regional entrepreneurship training workshop offers entrepreneurs from South Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Botswana and Zambia an opportunity to improve their entrepreneurial competencies and become part of the African network of "empretecos", as the recipients of the training sessions are called.
| EMPRETEC is a motivational training programme intended to encourage entrepreneurship in developing countries. It is coordinated by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Local EMPRETEC centres, supported by UNCTAD, now operate in 32 developing nations and to date have trained more than 200,000 aspiring entrepreneurs. Inspired by their EMPRETEC training, entrepreneurs put ideas into action and make their fledgling business grow. Many have founded or expanded companies and together they have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. |
