Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) is a global entrepreneurial training program
created, sponsored, and disseminated by the International Labour Organization. SIYB is
arguably the world’s largest skills enhancement program for entrepreneurs. SIYB has
been in operation since the early 1970s and currently operates in almost 80 countries. In
the decade to 2002, more than 100,000 entrepreneurs, thousands of trainers and
hundreds of small-enterprise development organizations around the world have
participated in the program (Samuelsen 2003). Surprisingly for an education program of
this magnitude and potential global importance, there has been relatively little program
evaluation performed. What evaluation has been conducted has been unsystematic, nonquantitative
and unsatisfactory.
Meanwhile, in the nation of Botswana, since the mid seventies, there has been a huge
growth in programs devoted to the training of small and medium entrepreneurs. The
SIYB program has formed a significant component of this entrepreneurial training effort
in Botswana (SIYB 1996). Since its introduction in 1983, the SIYB program has only
been evaluated once (Samuelson 1993). The methods used failed to provide a
satisfactory evaluation of the program. So, in Botswana, the world’s largest
entrepreneurial training program continues to run in the absence of any knowledge
concerning its efficacy.
Furthermore, the program’s curriculum does not include vital components of
entrepreneurship, namely: opportunity evaluation, self-efficacy, innovation, and
competitiveness. The objective of this study i.e. the study for this dissertation was to fill
this gap in our knowledge; and this was achieved by investigating the impact of the
Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) training programme in Botswana.