Thabiso Mashaba, the innovator and social activist

Thabiso Mashaba, or ‘Blak’, as he is popularly known by his associates, is a young man with big dreams and even bigger ideas. The innovative and resourceful 29-year-old’s passion for ‘being the change he wants to see’ in his society, has led to the establishment and subsequent success of the social enterprise, ‘These Hands’ organisation.

Mashaba says that social enterprises, whether for profit or non-profit, help support economic growth and human development efforts by using business thinking skills and processes to ensure impact investing.

“At These Hands we believe that it is not about the 1 billion mouths that we have to feed, but the 2 billion hands that are ready to engage. So the ordinary Batswana (particularly those in the rural communities like D’kar where we are currently doing our pilot work) will benefit greatly from this project in the sense that they will get co-creative design process and business thinking training. This will empower them with the capacity to develop their own grassroots innovations/technologies and ventures to service their communities. We will also support them with the USSD Based Social Media Network Platform in order to ensure that there is continuity and resources (capital and technical) support to help their technologies and ventures move from one stage to the other until they are sustainable,” he explains.

Mashaba completed his secondary education at St Josephs’ College in Gaborone and went on to the University of Botswana where he attained a double major Degree in Economics and Accounting. He also holds a Post Graduate Certificate in Culture and Economics (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - Post Graduate Certificate in Cultural Economics and is a graduate of the University of Botswana Global Masters in Development Practice.

Mashaba requested funding from various sources such as the International Development Innovation Network (IDIN) micro-grant, which they used to do the initial market research for the project idea. They also successfully bid to IDIN to host IDDS D’kar 2015 and IDDS Botswana 2016.

They supplemented with funding from the Southern African Innovation Support Programme (SAIS) through the Botswana Innovation Hub where they are members of the First Steps Venture Center on virtual agreement. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) department of Mechanical Engineering and the University of Botswana’ Department of Industrial Design also contributed to the project.

Mashaba is also a member representing the private sector on the Human Resource Development Council’s Creative Industries Sector Committee and a member representing the creative industries on the Business Botswana (BOCCIM) Youth in Business HLCC Sector Committee. “Through these platforms I make curriculum and policy contributions and advocacy to government on behalf of the creative industries. I am also a member of the BIHL Trust Prof Thomas Tlou Scholars, and we do various socio-economic development projects to empower other Batswana as part of paying forward our gratitude.”

According to Mashaba, creative and knowledge industries are cross cutting catalysts of the economy. “They influence all other sectors of the economy through their work, which is tied to the core cultural industries and closely linked to the values of society. Batswana have the ability through the creative industries to explore and implement creative and innovative solutions to their daily technology and efficiency challenges, using such things like design and ICT and create jobs using things like creative enterprises, music festivals, fashion shows, book writing and publishing, films. They also have the ability to generate wealth through IP related gains like patents and royalties and in turn generate wealth for government through tax charged on the creative enterprises.”

It seems there’s little ‘time out’ for the enterprising innovator. Mashaba is just as busy on the personal front. The recently married lad is a doting father of five children – a six year old girl, twins (a boy and girl) who are almost two years old, and newly born twins who are a month old. Despite the endless pitter patter of little feet in his home, he enjoys nothing more than relaxing by watching movies, and travelling with his wife whenever the opportunity arises.