The SMME Expo, running in tandem with the two-day trade and investment summit, will focus on small, medium and micro- businesses, and the important contribution they make to the local economy.
“Small business and the emerging entrepreneur are the way of the future for South African business,” says Tony Pancaldi, MD of the International Trade Group.
“Tourism is a case in point. Some of the smaller tourism businesses would almost certainly have been seen as informal businesses 10 years ago. However, today this sector alone is a huge generator of local economy and impetus for job creation and development.
“We have the greatest potential in the world to grow tourism even more — the challenge now is to make it sustainable. The same is true for many other industries such as information and communication technology and arts and crafts.”
Pancaldi says that more and more small businesses are meeting international quality standards and improving productivity. They need to be given recognition, which is the rationale for running the expo alongside a bilateral trade summit.
The organisers’ aim is for international investors and local “big brother” businesses to visit the exhibition and witness, first hand, emerging business in action. “It will also provide these entrepreneurs the opportunity to showcase their products and services to potential trade contacts,” says Pancaldi.
The expo is based on, but not limited to, three themes: arts and crafts; tourism; and information and communication technology. “We chose these three fields because they are the major areas of potential growth,” says Pancaldi.
“We all understand the potential of tourism for job creation, but South Africa is also emerging as a potential market for software development.
“In the past few years business was looking to India as the new growth market for IT, but this has slowly shifted to South Africa.”
Another of South Africa’s richest offerings is its cultural diversity and resultant art — vibrant and colourful, every piece of art produced in South Africa has a story to tell.
The recycling of coat hangers, cans and tins into functional objects or art shows our ingenuity of design — an art genre that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world.
With more than 150 exhibitors displaying their wares, the expo aims at assisting entrepreneurs find additional income-generating opportunities, as well as with training, marketing and capacity-building to bring people from the informal sector into the mainstream of South African business.