Budding entrepreneurship brings opportunity

African entrepreneurship – albeit unstructured at times – is budding, bringing much opportunity for business across the continent, says Stefan Sakoschek, chairman and CEO of the Global Inspections Group. Established in 2001, the company is an independent third party authority that performs quantity, quality and analytical inspection work from agricultural commodities to metals and minerals and consumer products. “The African market is extremely important in the southern hemisphere as it is a major supplier of raw materials and a consumer of finished products,” says Sakoscheck. While the continent continues to pose its own set of challenges – be they logistics, the lack of infrastructure or political instability – its functioning is showing growth, with much interest from the rest of the world. “Raw material exports to the Far East, namely China, are still a major focus. From our perspective, metals and minerals moving to the East and consumer goods coming back to the continent are very important and it’s where we play a role,” says Sakoschek. “There is also potential for imports of agricultural commodities such as wheat and rice, which are always in short supply in South Africa.” He says the weakening of the rand obviously favours exports in the sub-region at present. “As a country, we have little to export ourselves, but our real opportunity is geographical. We are a good trading platform towards landlocked neighbouring countries. We also have the required port infrastructure for that even though congestion is a concern.” Having recently expanded its fleet of vehicles with the acquisition of 10 new bakkies, Global Inspections is upbeat. “The continent is full of resources and while it has historically been cash-weary and cash-driven, in a strange way this has had the positive effect of protecting the economies of the continent from most of the crisis brought about by the excesses of the “cheap credit” in the northern hemisphere. It is also interesting to note, says Sakoschek, who is currently the chairman of the French South African Chamber of Commerce and Industries, that more European companies have taken an interest in southern Africa in the past 12 months, with over 100 new membership applications to the Chamber. “Could it be that southern Africa has become, if not the new ‘Business Eldorado’, at least a safe haven for global business in the mid and long term?”