On Wednesday, 23 October 2019 the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Nomalungelo Gina delivered a keynote address at the third graduation ceremony of the Incubation Governance and Management Development Programme (IGMDP). The ceremony took place at the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), Groenkloof in Pretoria.
IGDMP is a capacity-building programme that was initiated by the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) and implemented in partnership with the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda) in 2013, to develop the capacity of incubator managers, board members and officials responsible for incubation in government. 43 graduates were celebrated at the ceremony, and this is the final cohort following the two successful 22 and 26 cohorts of the IGMDP graduations in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Ms Nomalungelo explained that the IGMDP is an important programme that will eventually lead to job creation and economic growth as it seeks to improve skills to effectively manage and guarantee good governance by incubators. This will in turn, produce successful and sustainable businesses. She added that she is encouraged and pleased by the fact that the programme has been increasing its candidate intake yearly and has achieved its objective of delivering over 90 graduates in three years.
“The programme has steadily increased its candidate intake since it was established in 2017 and it will contribute well to the economy. The dti allocated R4 million for the programme to be successful and appointed the Enterprises University of Pretoria (Enterprises UP) as a service provider to develop the curriculum and deliver the programme to 90 delegates over three years” said Ms Nomalungelo.
She added that it is important to ensure that both the private and public incubator managers, Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and industrial parks managers receive information about the incubation development and management programme. She further said the dti is looking forward to training more people who want to pursue incubation as a career.
Deputy Minister was joined by the course leaders from the University of Pretoria (UP) during the graduation process. The heads of the SEZs, industrial parks, private incubators, Seda Incubators, the Incubation Support Programme of the dti (ISP) incubators and business leaders from organisations with Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) development initiatives were also part of the ceremony.
