Tatiana Pereira, co-founder and Executive Catalyst of ideiaLab, has been providing support and assistance to entrepreneurial initiatives in Mozambique for 12 years and this merit has earned her an award in the innovation category at the Portuguese-speaking countries (PALOP) level.
She has a degree in Human Resources Management from the University Institute of Lisbon, a Master of Business Administration from The Graduate School of Business at Curtin University, and was a Mandela Washington Fellow in 2014, having attended a course on entrepreneurship and business at Northwestern University as part of the Young African Leadership Initiative.
Tatiana Pereira also has certifications in Design Thinking Essentials, training for BDS providers, Social & Environmental Enterprise Development Toolbox, Executive Coaching, among others.
Invited to talk about the current challenges of entrepreneurship in Mozambique, Tatiana Pereira assured that ideaLab was founded on the belief of a more entrepreneurial country and of changing the narrative about the present and future of young people.
About the Innovation Awards 2022, she considered to be a very important milestone for the institution because it is a recognition of 12 years of work and today even in the Government speeches, themes related to entrepreneurship are portrayed, which shows, according to her, that entrepreneurship can be the solution.
“When we started, 12 years ago, the expression entrepreneurship was rarely uttered, it was said that the young Mozambican was not capable, but we wanted to change this vision and prove that entrepreneurship can be the way forward,” he said.
However, for the path of entrepreneurship to lead Mozambicans to success, a support system capable of facing the main challenges was needed, and so ideaLab was born with the logic of facilitating the lives of entrepreneurs on how to take the right steps to start or accelerate a business in a sustainable way.
The interviewee made it clear that, although ideaLab manages incubation and acceleration programs for entrepreneurship, it is not, however, an incubator.
CHALLENGES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN MOZAMBIQUE
“When a young person finishes college, the guidance that the family gives is to get a secure job, there is a stigma that needs everyone’s involvement,” she lamented.
Another challenge pointed out by Tatiana Pereira is related to the competence to undertake, so it is necessary to invest a lot in the training component so that people don’t just have the will to undertake.
Similarly, he refers to the business environment which, he reports, is very difficult, highlighting issues of regulation, access to information, market, financing, among others.
“Just starting and registering a business is expensive, not affordable, and see that the way to proceed in Maputo is different from other provinces, so the whole package of training and facilitation, formalization is not always clear,” he argued.
To face the cultural challenge, idealab tries, in coordination with partners, to publicize the businesses of the young people who go through its programs as a way to show that it is possible to undertake and succeed.
As for the issue of regulation, the organization’s efforts are made during the programs where the packages include speakers from regulatory institutions such as The One-Stop Shop (BAU), Tax Authority, and the National Institute of Social Security (INSS).
