Development finance and SMME support

Digital access is available for entrepreneurs.

The Business Hub is a City of Cape Town initiative that gives advice to entrepreneurs. In the first six months of 2022, 973 entrepreneurs participated in skills training offered by the Hub. The Hub partners with Productivity SA and the South African Renewable Energy Incubator in promoting SMMEs.

Access to the Hub is free via Smart Cape Services at libraries in the city or where free Wi-Fi is provided in all city-run buildings.

Another initiative to help entrepreneurs engage with the digital world was launched in 2022 by Silicon Cape and Huawei Cloud. Silicon Cape is a non-profit initiative that supports the creation of a sustainable tech and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Huawei Cloud showed 20 entrepreneurs how to accelerate the growth of their companies through cloud adoption.

Philippi Village (pictured), an integrated, mixed-used development, is proving a successful host to a number of dynamic small enterprises. Established by the Bertha Foundation and The Business Place Philippi and with seed funding from the Jobs Fund, it is currently home to more than 80 tenants providing products, services and training opportunities as well as job opportunities to the local community. The sports facilities and other amenities ensure that there is constant activity and a buzz within the development with locals feeling a sense of ownership.

In his 2022 State of the Province address, Premier Alan Winde quoted from the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2021, which stated that Cape Town is the number one performer in Africa for technology ecosystems and is home to almost two-thirds of all start-ups in South Africa. Winde announced the creation of an SMME Booster Fund which will support organisations that provide business development support.

Two of the Western Cape’s universities, Stellenbosch and Cape Town, are among the first collaborators with the University Technology Fund which aims to commercialise innovations and inventions coming out of tertiary institutions. The UTF has financial clout as it is a part of the South African SME Fund, an offshoot of the CEO Initiative which brought

Online Resources

Invest Cape Town: www.investcapetown.com

SA SME Fund: sasmefund.co.za

Small Enterprise Development Agency: www.seda.co.za

Small Enterprise Finance Agency: www.sefa.org.za

Sector Insight

together 50 major corporations, the Public Investment Corporation, the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Compensation Fund. Among the businesses receiving support from the SA SME Fund is Hyrax, a company which emerged from research done at the University of the Western Cape into which HIV-positive people were resistant to certain drugs.

The National Department of Small Business Development (DSBD) has several programmes to assist SMMEs and co-operatives. The Small Enterprise Development Agency is an agency of the DSBD and gives non-financial support to entrepreneurs through training, assistance with filling in forms, marketing and creating business plans. ■