Coventry University, named the "Midlands Enterprising University of the year" at the Midlands Business Awards 2010, has joined forces with the University of Stellenbosch Business School in South Africa to promote rural entrepreneurship.

Coventry is positioning itself as a global university and has projects in other parts of the world including South Africa. 

Coventry has partnered with the Centre for Applied Entrepreneurship at the USB-ED, a division of the University of Stellenbosch Business School to address the real need of developing entrepreneurs in rural areas of South Africa. 

Gideon Maas, Co-Director: Institute of Applied Entrepreneurship at Coventry University said: "South Africa is experiencing high levels of unemployment (currently 24.5%) and poverty, especially in its rural areas. This problem is worsened because people from rural areas are migrating to cities in search for a better life. As a result, this is causing serious disruption of the socio-economic well-being of people in both the rural areas and cities." 

In order to address this problem, South Africa is seeking to create jobs and economic growth in its rural areas.

Gideon Mass added: "Coventry University and the University of Stellenbosch Business School have extensive knowledge and experience of entrepreneurship support and so it seemed logical for us to work together to develop rural entrepreneurship. 

"We intend to test the system for South Africa first and after successfully adapting it to expand to other parts of Africa."

The support of private and corporate businesses is necessary to accelerate the development and implementation of this initiative.

This project is sponsored by the British Council and BIS (Department of Business Innovation and Skills, UK) as part of its Education Partners in Africa initiative.