By Chisomo Phiri
BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-Following his impressive pitch presentation, a 21-year-old Richmond Mugero from Chitawira in Blantyre on Saturday, February 5, 2022 emerged the top winner in World Bank Sponsored business pitch competition.
Mugero went away with a cash prize of MK600,000 as the starting-up capital for his business.
He was among ten selected students out of sixty students who were attending a two-week StartMe Up entrepreneurship skills training at Dzuka Africa Organization in Blantyre.
The training aimed at empowering the youths through entrepreneurship skills for them to be self-reliant citizens.
Presenting his business pitch in front of the three judges who came to organize the competition at the training institution, Mugero set to start a project called Citizen Digital Project that will train prisoners in digital skills once they have been released from prison.
He said the digital skills trainings will include, introduction to computers and basic computer packages, graphic designing, mobile application development, mobile phone repairing and software maintenance, audio and video engineering, computer programming, social media marketing and computer hardware repairing.
Mugero said, the idea came in after realizing that there is lack of mindset change among many prisoners which makes them break the laws again and back in prison.
“We want the prisoners have something to do once they are back from prison. Once they have something to do, they will never again break the laws in the communities they are coming from and back in prison. We want to change them into good citizen who will live independent life,” said Mugero.
He thanked the World Bank for rewarding him a huge amount of money saying he will use the amount as a starting capital for his project.
” I am very happy to won the prize. I will not spend the amount in other ways but taking it as capital for my business. I will use it to buy teaching and learning materials for the project such as computers and other things,” he said.
He then urged youths in the country to always think innovative and help their communities of origin.
In her remarks, Managing Director for Dzuka Africa Organization Dineo Mkwezalamba congratulated Mugero for ermeged the top winner of the competition.
” I would like to congratulate Mugero for becoming the first winner of the competition. To us at Dzuka Africa Organization where the entrepreneurship trainings were conducted, we feel honored that we are doing great job to shape good future leaders. We did not expect this to happen. We say thank congratulations to Mugero,” she said.
Speaking after the function, one of the competition judges Benson Chirwa said Mugero did not just come on the first position. He said, the winner met all the selection criterias.
“We have not just declared him a winner for the competition, no. He has met the selection criterias some being confident in explaining his business idea, facts in the business pitch, and his potential to bring the change among the inmates. He has presented his pitch well and deserves the first position and the cash,” said Chirwa.
Come second on the cash prize category was Dave Banda who went away with MK300,000 and Beatrice Magoda came third with MK200,000.
The rest fell into the categories of incubation and internship at the training institution so as they have a second chance to be further trained in their business idea as follows:
Chisomo Phiri ( Intern), Makhidzo Kataya ( Intern), Judith ( Intern) Christina Kalulu ( Incubator), Clement Chiwaya ( Incubator), Precious Maseya ( Incubator), Misty Chatha (Incubator), Rebecca Botomani (Incubator) and Bornface Mchenga ( Incubator).
The Sart Me Up entrepreneurship Training Program was being delivered through the digital skills grant from the Digital Malawi Project which was delivered from the Public Private Partnership Commission (PPPC) with the financial support from the World Bank.
