TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO
The Bulawayo Vendors Trust Association (BVTA) is setting up an innovation hub to transform the lives of vulnerable youths in the informal sector in the city through capacitation of information, communication and technology (ICT) skills.
BVTA executive director, Mike Ndiweni, said his organisation was scaling up this work and bringing other partners on board to set up the innovation hub in the city of Bulawayo.
“They will be looking at issues of green economy, ICT, climate mitigation as just mentioned but a few areas that we think we should take a leading role in. We view these as key drivers of our economy,” Ndiweni said.
He said BVTA was also equipping informal traders on livelihood diversification and value addition.
“We have seen that the impact of Covid-19 pandemic made some traders unable to continue with their traditional way of doing things and we then felt that it is prudent for us to come up with ideas around helping them to diversify their revenue or say income streams,” Ndiweni said.
Informal traders who depend on buying goods from South Africa, Botswana and other parts of the SADC region to sell locally were seriously affected by the Covid-19 pandemic which saw countries closing borders to contain the spread of the virus.
Ndiweni said BVTA believes that young people are the key drivers of the economy.
“So we’ve been doing this work in the Matabeleland region with our various partners. We believe that young people are the backbone of our economy and they should be the drivers of the economy in light of value addition,” he said.
