By Ebi Kesiena
South Africa is on a drive to expand the existing pool of Black Industrialists. The objective is to accelerate transformation, ensuring that Black-owned businesses become active players in the mainstream economy.
Over the past seven years, the South African Government has helped black-owned and managed businesses expand their operations into vital productive sectors of the economy through the Black Industrialists program.
These businesses received financial and non-financial support -enabling them to invest in crucial industrial sectors and value chains of the economy which without funding intervention, would have otherwise been beyond their reach.
More than 800 Black Industrialist businesses have benefitted from the programme. In 2021 alone, the developmental finance agencies approved R2.5 billion in the form of loans to support 180 black industrialists.
Given the shifting dynamics in both the global and economy, including the devastative impact of enforced economic closures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s become imperative for Government to reinvigorate its funding commitments and support to Black-owned businesses.
Against this backdrop, the Government has disclosed plans to reflect on the performance of the programme at its inaugural Black Industrialists and Exporters Conference (BIEC) scheduled for the 20th of July.
The conference will also incorporate the Inaugural Black Industrialists and Exporters Awards, whose objective is to recognise business excellence.
The gathering will also explore opportunities created by the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which local Black Industrialists can tap into. The AfCFTA advances the diversification of Africa’s export from being heavily dependent on raw materials to value-added products.
However, while the Black Industrialists programme has injected much need economic development and added jobs to South African’s economy, it is also helping to reverse the legacy of apartheid, which skewed the bulk of the country’s industrial assets currently concentrated among a minority few.
