Centre for youth empowerment
The aim is to promote youth entrepreneurship and youth enterprise in Agriculture, manufacturing, small-scale mining, Information and Computer Technology.
The youth between the age of 18-35 who are able to pitch viable business ideas with respect to innovation, technology, business linkages, are the ones who will be enrolled at the Business Incubation Centre.
According to the Dean of the Faculty of Education and Media studies Dr Mary Kamwaza, the main functions of the BIC is to provide infrastructure, business development services like trainings, foster business connectivity, assist them to formulate and monitor viable business plans plus supervise the performance of the graduate incubates owned business.
“The youth would be selected after submitting application forms to the Ministry of labour where by the evaluation committee shall assess the submission in line with the evaluation guidelines and tools,” she explained.
Currently adverts have been rolled out where by the selection process is being carried out, the closing date for application is October 31st, 2019.
Random interviews with the youth within Blantyre shows that they welcome this idea citing that there are many young people who have great innovative ideas but lack equipment and expertise to come up with a good prototype for the development of the country.
“With the high rate of unemployment, this centre will also help the youth to become independent financially,” said one of the prospective incubates.