One of the interesting aspects of the City of Cape Town is its deep understanding, and respect for its growing technology community. More importantly, besides enabling the technology community benefit from being part of a supportive city, the entrepreneurial environment that has been created is also ensuring that innovative start-ups have the best chance to survive.
One manifestation of this phenomenon has been a surge in the rate of innovative and creative young companies started in Khayelitsha. This is particularly important given the outside role of young companies in generating jobs. One young company earning its stripes is Iyeza Express, a business that uses bicycles to collect and deliver chronic medication from public health facilities to the doorsteps of clients, at a minimum fee of ZAR10.00 ($1) for every collection.
Entrepreneurship is seeing opportunities that others can’t see or are not willing to exploit, and grabbing the opportunity. Sizwe Nzima thought about his innovative idea of delivering medication by bike during an innovation lecture, when he and classmates were asked to generate ideas from newspaper stories to solve everyday problems. One particular story, about the large increase of chronic patients at hospitals in the country waiting in long queues, got him thinking. Sizwe knew all about waiting long hours in queues. For a number of years, he had been getting up early to collect medication for his grandparents from a nearby clinic. Instantly, that was his gold mine waiting to be exploited. Today, Iyeza Express’ five man team flits through the streets and alleys of Khayelitsha on bicycles, delivering medication to clients on prescribed dates.
Iyeza Express operates from two major hospitals in Khayelitsha, one in Site B and one in Harare; and for most of the patients collecting chronic medication from one of these clinics, taking advantage of the company’s service would be far from just a matter of convenience. As a matter of fact, some of the ill are too sick to get out of bed, and would need to spend long, arduous hours in the queues or otherwise go without life-saving medicine for illnesses like Tuberculosis.
Fortunately for Sizwe, the concept of Iyeza Express easily developed from good old word of mouth – his grandmother spread the word of the simple yet invaluable service that he provides. “You know what old ladies are like, my grandmother told me she knows another lady that gets chronic medication from the same hospital, then she knows two other ladies, so that’s how we started,” said Nzima.
Iyeza Express has five employees on bikes, and they collect and deliver medicine twice a month, depending on the clientele’s needs. The business humbly began with two bicycles bought with a ZAR10 000 ($1,018) cash prize he won for being the best entrepreneurial student at the Raymond Ackerman Academy of Entrepreneurial Development. Additional seed funding came from the South African Breweries Foundation Social Innovation Awards, who awarded him a ZAR100 000 ($10, 181) grant to further develop this innovative, potentially life-saving service and afford more bikes and helpers to carry out the deliveries.
“The aim of Iyeza Express is to give everyone health access. People need good health access despite their income, despite where they live – it’s a basic human right,” says the Iyeza Express founder.
He hopes to expand locally and even nationally. Currently he is in talks with the district health department in a bid to expand the system in all three hospitals and six clinics in Khayelitsha, and if he wins a contract from the Department of Health, the business can eventually deliver for free.
Meanwhile, a lot of effort is being put into developing a concrete model that can be easily replicated in other neighbourhoods. The demand is already growing rapidly; people in other sections of Khayelitsha and even in Gugulethu want to sign up for the service, but as much as he wants to be of help; however, they will have to wait until there is enough funding for more manpower and bicycles.
In addition, he harbours an ambition to upgrade his fleet of bicycles to electric bikes or mopeds. Moreover, If business takes off as forecast, he will need to hire plenty of cyclists to deliver medication.
“We are trying to employ young people within the Khayelitsha area to deliver within their areas. They know the addresses, they know the streets names, the people in the area. Employment-wise, it’s very big; it could employ loads of people,” he says.
For ease of communication, Sizwe is also developing a mass SMS system so his company can communicate with clients and also remind them of doctor’s appointments and deliveries.
Despite his preoccupation with Iyeza Express, Sizwe is working with two other colleagues to develop other projects that enrich Khayelitsha; one is a recycling scheme that encourages people to bring recyclable material in exchange for food and clothing vouchers (in partnership with a project called TrashBack), and the other is a gangster museum that hopes to help combat the problem of violence and give ex-cons a second chance in the community.
