The effect of the interventions of the South African Breweries' Kickstart Youth Entrepreneurship Programme on entrepreneurial and small business performance in South Africa

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the effectiveness of the interventions used by the South African Breweries (SAB) KickStart Programme to establish and grow entrepreneurial small businesses among young South Africans. South Africa has an extremely high unemployment rate, low economic growth and a dismal Total (early-stage) Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA). With regard to established businesses (older than three-and-a-half years), the GEM report of 2005 ranked South Africa the lowest of all the countries surveyed.

The SAB KickStart Programme comprises five phases: an awareness campaign, recruitment and training, a business plan competition for grants, success enhancement and national awards. The following interventions form part of the programme: the General Enterprising Tendency (GET) test; two-week live-in business management training; funding and mentoring; and a national competition for prize money. At every stage, adjudication is based on business plans and presentations.

The evaluation of the effectiveness of an existing entrepreneurship programme, the SAB KickStart Programme, has several advantages, in so far as it determines whether the programme does indeed attain its objectives, and could help to improve the structuring of such programmes for future use by other corporations in South Africa.

The population for the study comprised all the participants of the SAB KickStart Programme, from 2001 to 2006. A questionnaire was developed and a response rate of 28.5% was realised. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to the turnover and percentage profit figures of respondents to investigate the significance of the type of SAB KickStart support afforded. The results were confirmed by the Bonferroni multiple comparison of means test. The deduction is that funding and mentoring, after training, adds value to the programme. Eighty per cent of the SAB KickStarters were still operating their initial businesses, which they owned when they started on the programme, while a further six per cent had started another business, hence a "failure" rate of only 14 per cent. Many other meaningful findings emerged.

In conclusion, it can be said that the SAB KickStart Programme adds value and advances entrepreneurship, and could possibly be applied by other large institutions in South Africa In conclusion, it can be said that the SAB KickStart programme adds value and advances entrepreneurship, and can be elevated to other large institutions in South Africa.