Championing youth
entrepreneurship DUT’s Professor Sibusiso Moyo scoops the Entrepreneurial Development in Higher Education (EDHE) DVC Award 2021… BY Simangele Zuma The Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), Professor Sibusiso Moyo was awarded the Entrepreneurial Development in Higher Education (EDHE) DVC Award at the EDHE 2021 Awards ceremony held at the Premier Hotel in Johannesburg on the 19th of November 2021.
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rofessor Moyo was recognised for facilitating exceptional institutional support for entrepreneurship development in 2021. She won based on three focus areas, namely; student entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship development through teaching, learning and/or research and advancing the institution’s positioning as an entrepreneurial university.
Professor Moyo echoed the importance of collaborations and the wealth of materials and ideas shared by the DUT ViceChancellor and Principal, Professor Thandwa Zizwe Mthembu, from 2017 to 2021. “Professor Mthembu continues to drive us in the right direction and my role is to ensure that the team and I understand how to create a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem and ensure we have at least one approved innovative programme that will help train entrepreneurs with real enterprises by ‘design’ and not by ‘accident’, as our Vice-Chancellor and Principal usually says,” commented Professor Moyo. She also thanked all the staff and students who are working in this area, and in particular her team of entrepreneurial leaders led by Professor Keolebogile Motaung, Ms Nontokozo Ngcobo, Ms Nonhlanhla Khanyile, Dr Poppet Pillay and Ms Lana Brady. “I also thank Professor Colin Thakur, Ms Phumzile Xulu, Dr Themba Msukwini, Mr Zwakele Ngubane, Mr Ebrahim Asmal who just do what needs to be done without complaining and advancing our impact amongst our communities. Working on the boundary between the university and its partners is not easy and resources that have come through various donors/ partners have to be used responsibly to ensure there is impact and accountability,” added Professor Moyo. Professor Moyo advocates for student entrepreneurship, not just in words but also in action. At DUT she has been responsible for setting up the equivalent of ‘Activation offices’ for students in Durban and the Midlands. These offices target
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at least 10% of the 33 000 students annually based in Durban and in the Midlands. She has, with the support of the university management, set up a coordinating structure that brings together the two focal desks in Durban and Midlands, the Enactus team and the Social Entrepreneurship Rapid Incubator funded by SEDA – to become the Umbrella Centre for all the Entrepreneurial Entities. This new entity is called Innobiz and it is set to become the coordinating entity for entrepreneurship activities at the university with centralised services, supported by the Technology Transfer and Innovation portfolio. There are a number of initiatives DUT participated in in 2021, including the British Council Innovation for African Universities (IAU) Programme, with the mission to leverage Carbon Literacy for Youth Employability and Job Creation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The Network Partnership comprises the Sheffield Hallam University as the lead UK partner, Durban University of Technology as the lead SSA partner, Innovate Durban as the Ecosystem player, as well as Kisii University in Kenya, and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Nigeria. Professor Sunday Ojo is the Project Manager for this programme. Her advocacy is not just limited to DUT students but goes beyond to the youth in the province who can access co-designed programmes with the university’s quad-helix partners and international partners – including the Guangzhou International Sister City University (GISU), which she has been instrumental in ensuring DUT joins and presents opportunities to. In 2021, she and a team of her colleagues were awarded the GISU grant for Entrepreneurship sponsored by Guangzhou University.The grant for 2021 was awarded to her and the DUT Entrepreneurship Team comprising of Dr Ndivhuho Tshikovhi (Postdoctoral Fellow), Ms Nontokozo Ngcobo (Manager Innobiz), Professor Keolebogile Motaung (Director: Technology Transfer and Innovation) and Dr Xiang Zhou (Guangzhou University, China). She has been recognised internationally for her contributions not just to the South African agenda but the international agenda as well. The UNESCO-UNEVOC in Bonn, Germany, calls
