Nadia Waggie takes UCT’s entrepreneurship work to the national stage

Nadia Waggie, Head: Sustainability & Impact at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Careers Service, has been invited by the national Department of Small Business Development to join the Improving Entrepreneurship Education and Skills Development Subcommittee of the National Entrepreneurship Strategy (NES) implementation forum.

The subcommittee forms part of the implementation work emerging from the NES. Its current priorities include mapping existing entrepreneurship programmes and hubs, improving alignment rather than duplicating activity, developing entrepreneurial competency frameworks and appropriate measures, and clarifying implementation responsibilities and indicators. The broader aim is to strengthen entrepreneurship education and skills development across the entrepreneurial pipeline.

Waggie will bring a higher-education, careers and student-to-graduate perspective to the work. For many students, success after graduation still means one thing: a job offer. Waggie would like them to see a wider landscape. “Graduate success does not have to mean only finding a job,” she said. “It can also mean creating an enterprise, developing an innovation, creating opportunities for others, or applying entrepreneurial capabilities to solving problems that matter.”

“Our role … is to help students see and navigate the possibilities and understand entrepreneurship as one potential expression of their disciplinary knowledge, interests and capabilities.”

For six years, Waggie served as the national chairperson of the Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) Student Entrepreneurship Community of Practice, working across South Africa’s 26 public universities. She is also UCT’s EDHE Entrepreneurship representative and a core member of the UCT entrepreneurship ecosystem. These roles, she explained, have allowed her to engage with entrepreneurship not only as a student-development and career pathway, but as part of the broader higher-education and national entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Earlier this year, she took part in the NES consultation ahead of the State of the Nation Address (SONA), serving as a panellist on “Enhancing Entrepreneurship Education and Skills Building”. In September 2026, she represented UCT at the inaugural NES Forum meeting.

“I therefore see this invitation as part of a continuum; one that runs from sustained work within EDHE and UCT’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, through the NES consultation, to the national implementation conversation.”

Making the possibilities visible

Within Careers Service, Waggie and her colleagues work to broaden the idea of graduate career success, so that entrepreneurship and self-employment are visible alongside more traditional employment pathways. Part of this is helping students recognise entrepreneurship as a possible career and connecting them to relevant opportunities across the university.

And there are many opportunities. UCT’s entrepreneurship ecosystem includes Student Entrepreneurship Week, Student Women Economic Empowerment Programme (SWEEP), the EDHE Entrepreneurship Intervarsity, The Pitch UCT, d-school Afrika, the Graduate School of Business’s Bertha Centre and Solution Space in Phillipi Village, Financial Innovation Hub, the Genesis Project, student societies and initiatives within the faculties. Each offers a different entry point into entrepreneurial learning, innovation and enterprise development.

“Our role [at] Careers is not to own the entrepreneurship journey,” Waggie said, “but to help students see and navigate the possibilities and understand entrepreneurship as one potential expression of their disciplinary knowledge, interests and capabilities.”

More than starting a business

For Waggie, sustainability, impact and entrepreneurship are closely connected. “Entrepreneurship is not only about starting businesses – it can also provide a means of translating knowledge, talent and innovation into responses to societal, environmental and economic challenges.”

UCT’s ecosystem reflects that broader view. It spans entrepreneurial learning, interdisciplinary and social innovation, research commercialisation and venture development, and connects with areas such as the Sustainable Development Goals, climate and food-system innovation, impact investing, social enterprise and community resilience.

The important question, she said, is not only how much entrepreneurship activity the university offers, but how effectively those activities are connected into pathways that carry students and graduates from learning and ideas to innovations, enterprises and sustainable impact.

“I would like our students to see entrepreneurship as a legitimate part of their career landscape.”

Waggie sees strong alignment between UCT’s work and national priorities. Innovation and Entrepreneurship is one of the four institutional missions of UCT’s Strategy 2030, which supports the university’s ambition to be a “home of innovation in Africa”.

What excites her most about the appointment is the chance to connect three levels of work: UCT’s institutional ambition, the higher-education entrepreneurship ecosystem developed through EDHE, and the broader national agenda through the NES.

What is encouraging is that the NES is already being implemented by UCT across the initiatives the university is engaged in. The main objective of the NES, Waggie explained, is to improve levels of entrepreneurship in the country. This starts with cultivating the mindsets of students, future employers and employees, to be more entrepreneurial. One of the focus areas within the NES is to improve entrepreneurship education in public universities.

Assisting student entrepreneurs

The NES advocates for entrepreneurship centres within academic institutions to act as a single-entry gateway that connects entrepreneurs to training, funding, incubation, innovation support, compliance services, and market opportunities. Through strategic partnerships and ecosystem coordination, it will assist student entrepreneurs to progress from business ideation to growth and sustainability without navigating multiple support channels. By reducing fragmentation and improving access to critical resources, the centre strengthens entrepreneurial success, drives enterprise growth, and contributes to job creation and inclusive economic development.

Waggie sees the relationship as running both ways. UCT can contribute its experience to the national conversation, while bringing learning, partnerships and opportunities from the wider ecosystem back into the university. Her particular interest is the transition from student to graduate to entrepreneur: preparing students for an evolving world of work and connecting education more effectively with innovation and enterprise development.

“What is encouraging is that the NES is already being implemented by UCT across the initiatives the university is engaged in.”

For students and graduates, the longer-term opportunity is a more connected journey. UCT’s entrepreneurship work has identified the value of linking each stage of the pathway – from idea to validation, prototype, incubation, funding, market and, finally, scale – by drawing together existing institutional capabilities rather than duplicating them.

Greater alignment between UCT, EDHE and the NES could strengthen the support around students as they make that journey. “If we can strengthen those connections, the real value should ultimately be experienced by students and graduates through clearer pathways from developing entrepreneurial capability to translating ideas into sustainable economic and societal impact,” she said.

“Ultimately, I would like our students to see entrepreneurship as a legitimate part of their career landscape.”