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Braam Cronje

        BA Potchefstroom University
        Higher Education Diploma (Guidance) Potchefstroom University
        PES Program in Entrepreneurial skills University of North-West
        Male: South African citizen    Contact Details:  Braam@lantic.net    +27 82 327 7768

Braam is currently contracted to implement a CSIR project at the Tshipakoni Agricultural School in the Vuwani area of Limpopo in the period 2016 to 2018. He inducted 10 Infopreneurs and they have so far collected 1 500 agri-business records from community members in the area. He also led them on a HCD (Human Centred Design) online course which everybody successfully completed. He is currently using the Infopreneur network to support start-up small farmers and assists them with planning, preparation, production, harvesting, processing and marketing of agri-products. Braam used the project funds for the infrastructure and start-up costs for small farmers and monitors and evaluates the progress according to a business plan to ensure that agricultural products are produced and sold to grow the agri-business initiatives in the area. He is therefore involved in the financing of small-scale farmers and what impact this finance has on business processes.

As a Vodacom Community Services Franchisee, Braam established more than 600 community public phones in the Vhembe region of Limpopo and parts of Mpumalanga. This led to his appointment as Project implementer for Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to stablish infopreneurs (information gathering entrepreneurs) in the Makhado Local Municipality area. He conducted a survey of more than 4 000 SMME’s in Makhado and compiled a database on them. The team did an indigenous knowledge survey in the Makhado area, got to know the traditional leaders in the area and compiled a database of Indigenous Knowledge and started to harvest this knowledge on behalf of Department of Science and Technology. The survey was expanded to a survey of SMME’s and Indigenous Knowledge in the Vhembe District where we worked with 20 people in Vhembe and 4 people in Frances Baard District, Northern Cape. Braam is currently the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Distribution Centre Coordinator in Limpopo based at University of Venda. They surveyed and recorded indigenous knowledge in six communities managing a group of 15 people in this project. They surveyed 491 people and captured 244 videos about Indigenous Knowledge. These initiatives were expanded to ICT support of the inTouch database in Chimoio Mozambique, focusing on agriculture data and agri-business.