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0 views27 year old social entrepreneur Amu Mayimele has called for an increased move towards supporting young entrepreneurship in South Africa. Mayimele says that more and more “young people are getting up and taking the policies of the African Union and looking to implement them in their own societies”. She adds that the local private sector and municipal as well as central government “need to be role players in supporting new ideas”.
Mayimele graduated from Limpopo University with a B Com in Accounting but after a couple of years working for a corporate accountancy firm she realised that “there has to be more to life than just a career”. Mayimele had already been involved in various youth leadership projects and initiatives for more than a decade (including as Financial Officer of the International Youth Council, a UN program that seeks to get young people involved in running programs in line with the UN goals) and decided to set out on her own development project, Zaryah.
Soon afterwards, Mayimele was invited to be part of the Power of Youth summit in Cape Town earlier this year, an international event that brings together the top young social entrepreneurs from all over the world.
Taking what Mayimele calls the “holistic approach” to development, Zayrah (which derives from the word ‘zera’, meaning ‘seed’ in Hebrew) identify their primary goals as post-conflict reconstruction and “raising a new generation of leaders that will take charge of providing solutions to their own challenges”.
Mayimele has already headhunted and handpicked a team of seven staff from a range of different backgrounds and locations, all united by their passion for post-conflict and young leadership development. She is also looking to collaborate with John Roberts, an American entrepreneur from Power of Youth. Roberts’ Open University of West Africa (OUWA) looks to democratize tertiary education through high quality and easily-accessed online content that transcends potential economic, social or geographical boundaries.
In working with Zaryah, the idea is that potential OUWA students even in volatile post-conflict zones and refugee camps would still have access not only to the materials that they need to study, but also to online advice, care and counseling that might “help them to believe” and to “get up and try again” after a period of conflict.
Aside from all her work with Zayrah, Mayimele is also Project Manager for the 2013 African Youth Family Congress. The event looks to bring together around 200 young leaders (male and female) from all over Africa and provide them with a platform to meet and discuss issues that affect the youth of Africa, encouraging them to work together both with their own governments and each other to reach the potential for sustainable development throughout Africa. The event is due to be held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in July 2013.
Mayimele says that her transition into being a leading young light in the world of development and social entrepreneurship has “all happened very fast”. Considering both her own and her family’s largely corporate professional background, Mayimele says “most people think I am crazy” and admits that “it can be a lonely journey” at times. But she insists that anybody who might doubt her vision for a “different Africa” only serves as her “greatest motivation to make it all happen”.