3 minute read
Grad Gallery: Zak Essa
LinkedIn: bit.ly/3gD4NGP
Current position:
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Innovative Finance Consultant at Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Intern at the Bulungula Incubator
Past positions:
Co-founder of Chuma
Head of Expansion and Managing Director of Phaphama SEDI
Venture Capital Associate at University Impact
Academic history:
2020 Bachelor of Commerce Honours specialising in Economics at UCT
2020 Postgraduate Certification in Social Innovation Management at Amani Institute (India)
2019 Bachelor of Commerce specialising in Economics and Finance at UCT
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What are your day-to-day responsibilities at the Bertha Centre?
I work part-time at the centre and I am managing a project for the creation of an early stage fund that uses innovative finance tools to provide social enterprises with the capital they need to catalyse change. I spend my time understanding the barriers to raising funding for social enterprises in South Africa and how non-traditional finance can bridge these barriers. I do this by interviewing and surveying fund managers, academics, entrepreneurs and researchers.
What value do your qualifications add to your work, directly or indirectly?
The most important value that my qualifications have directly added is the ability to reconcile my subjective experiences with the bigger picture. For instance, when I worked at Phaphama, I mostly interacted with women entrepreneurs and thought that women dominate informal activities. But, when I studied the informal economy in my course, I saw that women actually make up a minority of informal businesses. This was a stark reminder that what I see in front of me may not always be a reflection of reality. Since I work in the social sector, this has been the biggest value my qualification has added and has guided my thinking when trying to drive social change.
What are the key skills that have contributed to your success so far?
I don’t think I can point to a specific skill that has contributed to my growth and development. There are however a few actions I have tried to take that have helped. First, I realised that people are always eager to help students. I leveraged my position as a student at the university to request time with people who have experience in the areas I am interested in. Inadvertently, I gained mentors along the way that have critiqued my thinking and inspired my journey. Second, I tried to be unafraid of making mistakes. Being young, it’s inevitable that I was going to make many mistakes along the way. I was lucky enough to lead many teams during my time at UCT and made more mistakes than I can count, but each time I failed as a leader or as a team member, I learned invaluable lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my career.
What impact has COVID-19 had on your career and industry?
Luckily, COVID-19 has not impacted my career in a negative way. I work in the social sector and while funding has dried up for some, I think that there has been a salient realisation that nonprofits and social enterprises play important roles in providing support during a crisis.
How do you see the informal economy evolving in the next few years?
South Africa’s informal economy is peculiar in that it is comparatively small (compared to other developing countries) despite high unemployment rates. How the informal economy evolves depends strongly on policy.
On the one hand, if policy is unfavourable to informality and there are barriers to trading goods or providing services, I think that the size and role of the informal economy will remain stagnant. On the other hand, if policymakers recognise the role of informality in being a catalyst for employment creation, I believe that the informal economy could be a powerful vehicle to addressing pervasive poverty and unemployment.
If I were a policymaker, I would move towards decriminalising informal activities in city areas and providing small grants to unemployed young people to begin businesses with support from organisations like Phaphama.
What are your future plans?
I am currently working at the Bulungula Incubator, a nonprofit committed to ending poverty in the rural Eastern Cape. This year, I am living in Nqileni Village and working on a job skills programme, within the incubator, to address the pervasive youth unemployment in the area.
