Exploring mentorship for fostering succesful youth entrepreneurship at Telkom, South Africa

Abstract

South Africa, in general, is plagued by high unemployment, especially among the youth. The study explores how mentorship can be employed to foster youth entrepreneurship at Telkom, South Africa. The primary focus of the investigation was to establish whether mentorship could be the answer to the declining youth entrepreneurship in the city of Tshwane. The study was done by conducting a qualitative research, using the Telkom mentorship programme as the sample. The sample consisted of mentors and youth mentees from the Telkom mentorship database. Data was collected using semi-structured open-ended interviews. Data analysis was done using thematic analysis with Atlas Ti 8.0. The literature showed that mentoring has benefits for both mentors and entrepreneur mentees. It also showed that the government and private sectors can play a key role in youth entrepreneur mentorship. The findings of the study have proven that mentorship yields positive results for youth entrepreneurs, which supports the literature in this study. The findings of the study yielded five themes, which were: success factors for mentorship, inhibiting factors for mentorship, role of government in mentorship, role of private sector in mentorship and influence of mentorship on successful youth entrepreneurship. In addressing the objectives of this study, the findings have proven that there is a relationship between mentorship and successful youth entrepreneurship, as per the first objective. The role of government and the private sector were identified as key in the mentorship of youth entrepreneurs. The recommendations made in this study include improvements in the mentorship programme for mentees and mentors, initiatives by government that include more mentorship programmes and better communication as well as providing funding for mentorship programmes. Additionally, the private sector needs initiatives to make their programmes more accessible to the public. Further research to establish the correlation between mentorship and successful entrepreneurship is recommended