Ministry of Youth Empowerment,
Development and Vocational Training

To qualify, the enterprise must be:

• 1 Majority owned by a Zimbabwean Youth (Aged 18 years to 35 years old)
• 2 Well established business with a monthly turnover of at least US$1500.
• 3 Have been in operation for at least 1 year.
• 4 SMEs resident in any country outside Zimbabwe qualify for consideration as long as the SME is majority owned by a diaspora Zimbabwean or person of Zimbabwe origin. The SME must have a minimum annual turnover of US$25000.

Successful applicants will take part in an intensive program which involves workshops and one on one business development support services (BDS) over a period of 12 months during which your business will be assisted with the following:

• 1 Organisational maturity issues (management capacity, ICT)
• 2 Product quality, production efficiency
• 3 Access to finance to support the high growth objective
• 4 Most important increased access to local and international markets.

Methodology

• 1 Initially 100 Youth owned small businesses will be selected into the program.
• 2 The businesses would undergo monthly business support
• 3 After an initial 3 months period, the cohort will undergo a monthly business competition resulting in the monthly reduction of the participants until only 20 businesses remain in the program.
• 4 The remaining 20 will receive intensive training so that these end up travelling to the UK to pitch their businesses for equity partnership from the Diaspora and selected Stakeholders and also develop potential UK markets for their goods and services.