Dar es salaam, 8 January, 2014
Building on his longstanding initiatives of encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit amongst ordinary Tanzanians, the Executive Chairman of IPP Limited, Dr Reginald Mengi, has once again, launched a business idea competition, where about 6 winners will collectively take home 60 million Tanzanian shillings as capital grant to start a business of their choice.
The contest, is specific to Tanzanians using online platform twitter and is aptly named 3N – taken from the Kiswahili words ‘Nitabuni wazo bora la biashara, Nitatekeleza, na Nitafanikiwa”, which can be translated into – “I will come up with a good business idea, actualize it and succeed.”
To compete one must pitch a good business idea to Dr Mengi, in a tweet tagging him at his handle @regmengi. Participants are at liberty to enter as many proposals as they wish.
The new Competition – the results of which will be adjudicated every month – will last for six months (January 8, 2015-June 30, 2015). The monthly winner will be given Tsh10 million with which to implement his or her ‘winning’ business idea.
The business ideas will be appraised by a panel of experts in related fields. 10 ideas will be selected every month for consideration and interviews by experts in effort to determine the winner for a given month – whose idea will be deemed the best of the month, winning fairly and squarely on merit alone.
This is the third time Dr Mengi who strongly believes in the power of social media in igniting entrepreneurship especially amongst the young generation, is running a competition using the tweeter platform. The first and second competitions earlier in 2014, sought to harness ideas on alleviating poverty in resource rich Tanzania, where millions of people suffer income poverty.
Speaking at the launch, Dr Mengi, said, the competition is about ‘encouraging people to have eyes that see business opportunities’, adding that, the contest was an effort to join the government and the private sector in the development of entrepreneurial capacity in Tanzania.
“I have been steadfast in encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit amongst Tanzanians especially the youth. I want our economy to grow to such an extent it produces over 100 millionaires, who are running clean and ethical businesses,” he said.
He said having the right business idea, at the right time and the right place was more important than monetary capital.
“I want our young people to know that they can start small and grow as big as any multinational company that you can think of,” he said, adding that he believed that one day the Tanzanian entrepreneurial environment will be among the best in Africa.
Dr Mengi stressed that this latest version Competition is open to all Tanzanians wherever they may be. Dr. Mengi reminded his audience that all intending competitors have to forward their business ideas to his twitter address (<@regmengi.>) and proposals sent via any other ‘channel’ will not be considered, he said.
Competition winners will likewise be notified accordingly via their Twitter account (DM), and will be presented with their winnings at a brief, open ceremony. Decisions of the Competition’s Panel of Judges are final and not subject to appeal.
Dr Reginald Mengi, Forbes Picture