I am looking to take an existing business concept from the UK to South
Africa and am looking for some advice on what is likely to work best
and be successfull? I need to make enough money to live on in South
Africa with a £20,000 to £50,000 initial investment.

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Request for Question Clarification by johnny_phoenix-ga on 28 Nov 2002 08:00 PST

Hi onetime, sorry to sound like an interviewer rather than a
researcher, but what is your current experience and field of
expertise. This info would be useful as it is no use suggesting that
opening a hairdressing salon or an internet cyber cafe, if you have no
hairdressing or computer administartion experience.

It may be easier to narrow the search if we have an idea what fields
you are both prolific and interested in.

Thanks 

JP

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Clarification of Question by onetime-ga on 28 Nov 2002 09:14 PST

Johnny, good question and I appreciate you taking the time to ask. My
experience in the past 7 years has been in selling enterprise software
solutions to large organisations, prior to that I did a 4 year stint
running a chain of restaurants.

I should also add that I am happy for the business concept that you
recommend to be of US origin but I do need to have easy access to it
from the UK where I am living so I can introduce it down to South
Africa.
Any more Q's please do ask :-)
D

Hi onetime-ga

The South African economy has long been based on mineral resources and
this is still the biggest industry in the largest centre,
Johannesburg. However, there are areas of massive opportunity in
tourism and entertainment, Information Communication Technology (ICT),
financial services and the retail market.

In terms of living in SA, you can buy a nice flat in the city bowl or
Atlantic Seaboard areas of Cape Town from around R300 000, with houses
available from R650 000 up. Property is cheaper in the rest of the
country. You can live very well on R200 000 a year.

The following are highlighted as sectors of opportunity in the Western
Cape by the government:

	- Conference Tourism
	- Eco-tourism
	- Film Production
	- Ship Repair & Containerisation
	- Precision Engineering
	- Boat-building

See the following article for areas of opportunity in Gauteng and
other parts of South Africa:
http://www.isa.org.za/invest/rsa_overview.asp
	
You can search a database of franchise opportunities at this address:
http://www.frain.org.za/search/default.asp
Note that the exchange rate is around £1 to R15.

Confidence in the retail sector is at its highest in 14 years
according to this article:
http://www.safrica.info/pls/procs/SEARCH.ARCHIVE?p_content_id=191479&p_site_id=38

The Department of Trade & Industry: Business Opportunities in South
Africa
http://www.thedti.gov.za/startingabusiness/businessopportunities.htm

BRAIN (Business Referral and Information Network): 
http://www.brain.org.za/


Good luck!

nickyspag-ga

Some good stuff there, it was quite a vague request and i think you
did a good job in narrowing it down. The only thing holding me back
from giving you an extra star was that I would have appreciated more
hard data about the gap between what is success full in south Africa
and what could be successfull in the future. That being said many
thanks for some good work, Dave