One of the Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) programme’s mandates is to develop a national policy framework for entrepreneurship at South Africa’s universities.
“But, five years after the programme inception, we are still trying to put parts of the puzzle in place. While the picture is taking shape, it’s taking longer than anticipated and turns out to be more complicated than expected. I feel we are not getting the number of responses we should be getting to have reliable results.”
This was the view that EDHE’s Director, Dr Norah Clarke, expressed in her role as part of a launchpadpanel at last week’s the EDHE Lekgotla 2022 that was hosted by Nelson Mandela University from 19-21 July. ‘Launchpad’ explored outcomes-oriented initiatives in entrepreneurship, that are aimed to culminate in action, high impact and ecosystemic change.
The session, themed Mobilisation for Impact: Introducing the findings from the South Africa Innovation Ecosystem Mapping Report, was moderated by Ms Charleen Duncan (middle below), Head of Programmes at Allan Gray Orbis Foundation. It kicked off with a presentation of findings of a national survey conducted by UK-based technology transfer, commercialisation and information management company, Oxentia.