In the field of entrepreneurship, the phrase 'don't reinvent the wheel' is often used, serving both as advice against wasting effort and as a gentle way to point out a lack of originality in an idea. However, this phrase rarely poses a more useful clarifying question: what is the state of the road?
Since the 'bicycle' itself as an engineering solution is largely solved, the 'road'—the infrastructure of distribution, access, culture, and context through which any good or service must pass to reach the customer—becomes critically important. This road is unique to each market and is almost never solved the way outside observers assume.
This distinction is immensely significant in the context of South Africa and across the African continent more broadly. Many key entrepreneurial questions here concern not what needs to be created, but how it should be created for a specific person in a specific place, taking into account specific constraints. For instance, the mobile money revolution that transformed financial accessibility in East Africa was not a new idea about money.
M-Pesa did not invent the concept of transfer or payment. Instead, it deeply studied the conditions under which millions of people moved money: distrust of formal banking, reliance on mobile networks, and the social context of transactions between acquaintances. It developed infrastructure that worked within these conditions, not against them.
The main lesson is that innovations are not unnecessary. The most significant innovations often remain unnoticed at the product level but manifest fully at the system level. A product, such as money transfer, was familiar, but the system—the methods of access, pricing, distribution, and trust—was truly new.
Founders who identified this need did not ask, 'What has never existed?' They asked, 'What exists but does not reach this person, and why?' This second question is harder, requires deep knowledge of the specific context, and generates more sustainable solutions because they are more deeply rooted.
The landscape of South African entrepreneurship is full of examples of this contextual innovation. These companies did not invent their category, but understood their customers and markets so well that they created something existing players could not build. The taxi industry, despite its informality and discussions about formalization, is an example of understanding context. It served customers that formal public transport could never serve, doing so faster and at prices the market could afford, not because it invented a new mode of transport, but because it understood the road.
Any subsequent innovation in urban mobility in this country must take this understanding into account. For a founder deciding to create a product, the question 'has this been done before?' is less useful than the question: 'Has this been done for this specific customer, in this specific context, at this specific price?' The answer to the second question almost always sounds like 'not good enough.' And 'not good enough' is a much more fertile starting point than 'nonexistent,' as it is based on real data from the actual experience of customers who tried existing options and found their shortcomings.
The metaphor of the road extends further than it seems. Roads in South Africa are not uniform. Infrastructure problems related to delivering to a client in Sandton are fundamentally different from problems related to serving a client in a small town's outlying settlement in the Eastern Cape. Business models that gain recognition, funding, and media coverage are typically created for the first road and then presented as solutions to problems existing on the second.
The gap between these two roads—in infrastructure, purchasing power, cultural context, digital access, and trust in formal institutions—cannot be bridged by product alone. A system specifically built for the conditions of the road the customer travels on is required. A founder who creates such a system is not reinventing the wheel; they are doing something more complex by understanding the road well enough to build the infrastructure that allows the wheel to run on it. Such understanding does not come from hackathons or customer portrait exercises; it arises from proximity, from prolonged and sincere interaction with a specific context, which provides insights unavailable in a market research report. Ultimately, this is the most important form of innovation available to a founder in this economy—not what has never existed, but what has never been made functional here.
During the annual Youth Day, South Africa frequently calls on young people to become entrepreneurs. Although entrepreneurship is a vital avenue for addressing youth unemployment in the country, critics argue that this approach has become overly simplistic and detached from the realities required to build sustainable businesses.
Despite acknowledging the importance of entrepreneurial education, simply completing a course or seminar is insufficient. The ability to run a business differs significantly from the actual capacity to build one. Ambition alone is not enough if founders lack the necessary education, experience, networks, and supportive environment to create long-term companies.
It is crucial to move away from romanticizing those who abandon their studies for a startup, claiming it is a reliable development strategy. A more realistic, albeit slower, path involves completing formal schooling, developing literacy and numeracy, pursuing further education, gaining work experience, understanding customer needs, and learning how organizations function before attempting to build on a solid foundation.
The country requires more builders and specialists capable of solving problems, rather than merely individuals forced into survival mode due to labor market failures. While survival-oriented businesses deserve respect, they differ from enterprises focused on growth. A person selling merely to survive is not in the same position as a founder creating a company capable of hiring hundreds of employees.
According to World Bank data, small and medium-sized enterprises account for about 90% of all businesses and over half of global employment. In South Africa, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that small businesses provide between 50% and 60% of the workforce and contribute at least 34% to GDP. However, too few small firms transition into medium-sized employers, which the country urgently needs.
Part of the issue is that growing companies are burdened too early with requirements typical of large, mature corporations. Amendments to South Africa's small business definitions classify micro-enterprises (up to 10 employees), small enterprises (11 to 50), and medium enterprises (51 to 250), with varying revenue thresholds depending on the sector. Nevertheless, a company with 60, 100, or even 250 employees is not a giant but often a small, growing business striving for professionalization, market access, cash flow management, and skilled recruitment.
If South Africa wants more young entrepreneurs to become employers, policy must recognize this distinction. Regulation should be different for large, established firms capable of absorbing it, and lighter, simpler, and growth-oriented for truly small and scaling enterprises. Compliance should not become an obstacle for a promising company when hiring its next ten employees.
Similar principles apply to finance, procurement, and networks, as strong entrepreneurial ecosystems are built not only on motivation. As shown by the Startup Genome Global Report on Startup Ecosystems, competitive ecosystems depend on the interplay of funding, talent, market reach, connectivity, and knowledge. This means young founders need practical pathways to market entry, mentors who understand scaling, early customers willing to take risks, as well as access to capital and networks that allow promising companies to grow.
Young entrepreneurs also need higher-quality role models: not just famous founders, tender entrepreneurs, or Silicon Valley myths, but authoritative South African builders who solve real problems, hire people, serve customers honestly, and create useful products or services.
As stated in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the concept of 'social entrepreneurship' may mask a simple truth: much of honest and productive entrepreneurship is already social activity when it creates value, jobs, and improves services upon which the population depends. This is the kind of discussion that should take place on Youth Day, because entrepreneurship will help develop South Africa's future leaders only if we stop viewing it as a slogan and start seeing it as a system that needs to be built.
Young people do not need another call for intensified struggle. They need schools that build competencies, universities that introduce ideas and technologies, workplaces that provide experience, investors willing to support them, worthy examples to emulate, and a government that steps aside, giving small businesses room to grow.
