Bulawayo (New Ziana) -The Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Association (BVTA) is conducting a two year financial literacy training programme to equip informal traders with financial skills that will help them grow their businesses.
Financial literacy refers to the education, understanding as well as the knowledge of how money is made, spent and saved. BVTA hires experts in financial management to impart skills that will enable these traders to make sound financial decisions.
In 2008, the organisation collaborated with the National University of Science and Technology in conducting a study which informed them that about 13 percent of informal traders were driven by entrepreneurship but did not have much knowledge on making profit.
This then led to the decision to tailor make financial literacy lessons for informal traders.
BVTA director, Michael Ndiweni said: “The idea behind the whole initiative is to build informal traders’ capacity to expand their businesses, manage their finances better as well as to learn the dangers associated with relying on loans from micro financiers as such they need skills to expand their businesses.”
He added that the lessons have enlisted massive response with a substantial number of traders already trained.
“The response is massive because so far we have trained ten groups, each with ten to thirty people. In a space of two weeks we have managed to train three hundred people.”
The organisation called on the government and other stakeholders to create conducive environments where these traders might trade.
“In our view, we think that our members will grow at some point should they get conducive environments from the government and other stakeholders, then they will be able to get themselves established and be able to grow and compete with the big players in the industry,” said Ndiweni.
Madade Ndlovu, an informal trader from Ward 9 in Bulawayo said the lessons have helped her expand her business.
“I am now able to plan and budget on my own, I am able to prioritise and know what is important for me and what can make my business grow,” she said.
Another informal trader, Pretty Mpofu from Ward 13 concurred, saying that the lessons have helped her to stay in business despite the unstable economic conditions in the country.
“The knowledge l have acquired from the financial literacy lessons have helped me stay in business despite the economic challenges that have been prevailing in the country. l applied most of them and up to today I am still trading and most of my friends stopped because they could not manage their finances or plan well.”
In Zimbabwe, a large segment of the working population is in the informal sector.
New Ziana
