Economic Empowerment
Source: City Press
All over the world, women outnumber male entrepreneurs. This has led to a renewed focus on gender entrepreneurship and the development of appropriate interventions for gender-specific groups across the globe. At the forefront of this effort in South Africa is the National Empowerment Fund (NEF).
Speaking at a Women’s Day event, the NEF’s CEO Philisiwe Mthethwa said the NEF is driven by the knowledge that if Africa had been destined for perpetual poverty, she would not have been so richly endowed with her vast and varied natural resources, and an illustrious history as a catalyst of human civilisation, as well as a burgeoning human capital.
“With almost 200 million people aged between 15 and 24 years, Africa has the youngest population in the world today.
“Contrary to global trends, the number of young people in Africa will double by 2045 and if this trend continues, the continent’s active labor force will amount to 1 billion people by 2040, making it the largest in the world, surpassing both China and India.
“Our future growth will be spurred by factors such as the most rapid urbanisation rate in the world; accelerating technological change or as others term it, the fourth industrial revolution, which will help unlock new opportunities for consumers and businesses; and equally important, the jewel in the crown that women in Africa are on the rise as leaders across the social spectrum, and in this ascendancy we are unstoppable.
“Just like our beloved continent, women bubble with hope, renewal, vigor, and promise.
“As we celebrate the long line of South Africa’s profound and dynamic women, we acknowledge that we stand here today because, for generations, women in our country have taken a stand against the institutionalized and traditional systems of economic exclusion, social degradation, and exploitation.
“What it means to be unstoppable in the pursuit of business and personal excellence is the recognition that your vocation is not only to lead but indeed to inspire many more to follow your example; to follow your sparkles as true meteors in our nation’s quest for a growing, inclusive and employment-generating economy.
“This you will do because you are strong and dynamic, you are beautiful, progressive and patriotic.
“What it means to be unstoppable is that as part of the majority (52% of the adult population in South Africa), we assert that in as much as South African society cannot progress without black people in the forefront of the economic mainstream, so too will progress and growth be unattainable without the active, primary, fundamental and meaningful participation of women across all sectors and levels of the economy,” she said.
Mthethwa said women were playing an increasingly important role in society. In the marketplace, not only as consumers but also as investors and asset managers, on the factory floor in academia, in politics, in the arts, and in communities. She said society can only be the better for it when the fullest human capacity is deployed intelligently across all spheres of human endeavor.
Women are entering self-employment successfully at an ever-increasing rate; according to the latest results from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), women are doing better on average than male entrepreneurs in the country.
“In fact, in the experience and knowledge of the NEF, I can bear testimony to the fact that our best investees are women entrepreneurs.
“We can attest to the fact that to fund a woman is to fund a nation.
“We have found that women entrepreneurs are more likely to succeed in business because they are focused, driven and true to their dreams. They service their loans with far greater diligence and have been known to do so in record time.
“And so when we are asked why the NEF has approved over R3.4 billion for the benefit of black women entrepreneurs out of total disbursements of R6.3 billion, we can only say it is because of women rock,” she said.
“That is why all over the country the majority of beneficiaries from our entrepreneurship training, our incubation support as well as investor education interventions, the majority are women.
“Many of them come from rural and peri-urban localities because they too are unstoppable,” she said. Mthethwa said one of the biggest quests of our society today is the drive for the industrialization of South Africa’s economy. She said it was the conviction of a growing mass in South Africa today that this quest will only find true fruition and triumph if women stand at the center of this urgent and historic pursuit.
“These are potential industrialists who see prospects for growing the export market in a variety of sectors, including renewable energy, tourism, minerals beneficiation, agro-processing and business process outsourcing, which incorporates call centres, data storage centres, termination centres and more.
“These potential industrialists would see opportunities in textiles, mining, automobiles; renewable energy and biofuels, whether this is nuclear, solar, biomass, hydro, co-generation or wind.
“As visionaries for large-scale enterprises, these black industrialists would have an eye on plastics; pharmaceuticals and chemicals; forestry, pulp and paper.
“They will be enlivened by opportunities in infrastructure, which of course includes telecommunications, healthcare, roads, rail, airports, dams and water.
“These industrialists would want to become players in manufacturing and tourism, which encompasses hotels, resorts, tourism attractions and leisure.” She urged the delegates at the breakfast meeting to rise as women “to take your places behind the steering wheels of South Africa’s economy”.
“You will find development financiers such as the NEF, the Industrial Development Corporation, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the Small Enterprise Finance Agency ready to provide financial and non-financial support in pursuit of a growing, employment-generating and inclusive economy.
“We meet them daily at the NEF, and indeed we can point to a robust pipeline of strategic and industrial projects worth R29 billion, with the potential to support over 85 000 jobs,” she said.