PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma’s claim earlier this year that more than 340,000 young people had in the past year accessed mentoring through an app called Mara Mentor, run in partnership with the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), may not be true.The cellphone app (which also has a web version) was developed by the Mara Foundation and allows young entrepreneurs to pose business questions to mentors.It has been available in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya since 2012, and was launched in SA in June 2015. The NYDA claims that shortly after its South African launch the app was ranked second on the iOS app charts for SA.In the Presidency’s budget vote address in May, Zuma said he was encouraged by the uptake on the app. "By April 2016, over 340,000 young people in our country were being mentored by 269 mentors," he said.NYDA senior operations manager Siyabonga Mbambo says the agreement with Mara Mentor followed a meeting between Zuma and the organisation’s founder, Ashish Thakkar, at the World Eco...
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