Diamond mining major De Beers announced in August that it has secured a $3-million, three-year partnership with US-based tertiary education entity Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) to empower young entrepreneurs and established business owners in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

The programmes will be headquartered at the Botswana Innovation Hub, a science and technology park in Gaborone, Botswana.

The partnership will result in Stanford GSB launching two programmes in 2018. The Stanford Seed Transformation Programme, set to start in January 2018, is a year-long leadership programme that will be taught by Stanford GSB faculty and seed-trained local facilitators.

The programme will provide management training, leadership team workshops and networking support to assist Southern African leaders to grow their businesses, create jobs and aid in leading their region to economic growth and diversity, says De Beers.

The Stanford GSB Go to Market programme, which will be held in March 2018, is a one-week, intensive entrepreneurship boot camp, taught by the Stanford GSB faculty. A combination of lectures, case studies and small-group discussions will aim to help aspiring entrepreneurs gain the necessary confidence and skills to commercialise their business ideas and fast-track their route to market. The programme plans to run in Botswana initially, but may expand to include participants from other Southern African countries once it is fully established and finalised.

The partnership with Stanford GSB is De Beers-owned and will be supported by a range of government entities in Botswana, most notably the Botswana Innovation Hub, the Botswana Ministry of Tertiary Education, and the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development.

Botswana Tertiary Education Minister Dr Alfred Madigele is enthusiastic about the partnership. “We welcome the private sector’s support in developing programmes that will enhance diversity and have a positive socioeconomic impact for the youth. Through the Botswana Innovation Hub, government will provide the facilities, infrastructure, and operational and technical support for the programme, which has the potential to have an important impact on our economic future.”

De Beers Group CEO Bruce Cleaver believes that the two programmes, as well as the partnership with Stanford GSB, have the potential to aid the acceleration of diversification and provide more opportunities for young, ambitious Southern Africans. “Economic diversification and youth employment opportunities are priorities for our government partners and are also priorities for De Beers Group.”

Stanford GSB professor of organisational behaviour and Stanford Seed faculty director Jesper Sørensen says: “We are excited to work with the young and established entrepreneurs in the Southern African region through this collaboration. As with our experiences in East and West Africa, we are coming to learn as much as we are to teach. If the business and job growth that follows matches what we are seeing in our other locations, I anticipate this will be a very impactful initiative.”