WITS Business School and headache powder brand Grand-Pa on Wednesday announced a partnership aimed at helping spaza shop owners grow their businesses. The Grand-Pa Spaza Shop Programme will be offered by the school’s Centre for Entrepreneurial Development and will provide owners of small shops with the tools to ensure the sustainable growth of their stores.
Topics such as cash flow management, marketing, competitive buying and pricing, and daily business functions would be covered in the new course. The programme is being piloted with 40 spaza shop owners from areas such as Soweto, Cosmo City, Pretoria North and Diepsloot. Wits Business School employees, who would usually not qualify for admission into courses offered at the business school, will be among the candidates.
Courtesy of BDLive.
It'd be fantastic if this works. What does concern me is that the lecturers do not understand the business of micro-businesses. One hopes that they are sensitive to this fact. If they want to make a success of this I strongly recommend that they look at the SANZAF project which has a 60% success rate. In case anyone forwards this onto Wits Business School, I've included an overview of the SANZAF ED programme.