South Africa has potential as immense as the opportunities she offers.
But she is still far from the rainbow nation she is idealised as and there is certainly not yet a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
Instead, it is still bedevilled by static rate of unemployment, haunted by inequality and hounded by poverty.
This is the South Africa of contradictions that we wake up to every morning.
The question is what can be done to address this malady? How can South Africa’s potential be realised?
What is required is the building of new productive capacity.
Entrepreneurs all over the world are unrivalled in their capacity to unlock economic potential. Entrepreneurs create value out of nothing.
In the words of Jeffrey Timmons, an American authority on the subject, they see opportunity where others see “chaos, contradiction and confusion.”
Entrepreneurs are driven, hungry and passionate; giving them the sense of urgency we so desire to address this challenge.
Entrepreneurs are not mere risk-takers, but the game changers that this country needs to beneficiate its resources – human and natural — to create new markets, new value and unlock new wealth.
With such clear benefits, why then is more not being done to promote entrepreneurship?
This is because the entrepreneurial road is not paved with gold. Numerous challenges impede the progress entrepreneurs and the process of entrepreneurship itself.
It is therefore important to identify some of these impediments and address them.
It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel in this regard. But in adopting solutions from elsewhere, let us adapt them to the uniqueness of South Africa’s challenges and circumstances.
An understanding of this uniqueness is a prerequisite for devising viable solutions. As the 19th century spiritual philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, the 19th century spiritual philosopher once said: "to understand is to transform what is".
To be able to transform our economy and the level of entrepreneurial activity in our country, we need to understand the reason why banks and venture capitalists do not fund most small businesses; we need to understand why our country's unemployment level has been static at an average rate of 25% for more than five years; we need to understand why access to markets for small businesses is a challenge for entrepreneurs, public and private sector organisations.
We also need to understand why there is a distinct inability for most small black-owned business to access opportunities that exist in key economic sectors in our country.
Channelling resorces
As the National Executive Director of the South African Black Entrepreneurs Forum (SABEF), it is my duty to highlight something that we as an organisation have come to understand based on our experience working with small businesses in numerous townships in South Africa.
We have come to realise that there is a distinct "missing middle".
The missing middle is a concept that has been written about on various platforms. Those in economics believe that it is a proxy for the informal sector and developing countries desires to formalise them.
To put it in our context, the missing middle in South Africa exits because we want to develop black South African entrepreneurs and small business owners, who are mostly informal and small in size, to become our country's future industrialists and large size corporations owners.
The missing middle comprises of two types of entrepreneur, one discovered but still under-funded, and the other not even noticed.
Let me start with the discovered entrepreneur. This is the high impact entrepreneur that will deliver the employment opportunities that this country needs.
These entrepreneurs have the requisite skills, because they have been commercially socialised by the privilege corporate experience after a good education – university degrees or diplomas.
Elsewhere in the world they tend to find it easier to access funding from their networks and have access to the requisite infrastructure — transportation and access to ICT, and live in enabled entrepreneurial environments.
Their potential to enterprises that can employ more than 50 people is relatively sound. It is high time more resources are channeled to this market.
There is little excuse since this is a well-established target market for venture capital the world over.
Yet, focus on the latter group should not be at the expense of more marginal entrepreneurs – entrepreneurs on the ground.
These are the undiscovered, unnoticed and whose cries go unheeded. These are the ones with natural entrepreneurial talent, but not the training.
They have the imagination to come up with brilliant ideas, but lack the skills to run sustainable enterprises due to a history of sub-standard education by virtue of being born poor – hence their financial illiteracy.
These rough diamonds live in rural and peri-urban areas where access to information and business opportunities are much further than the mere finger click away that typifies the first group.
This segment of the missing middle is in the majority, but they are minority participants in the economy.
They are the missing middle that South Africa needs to develop because how else will they become high impact entrepreneurs and future industrialists of our country?
This article forms part of a supplement made possible by the Mail & Guardian's advertisers. Contents and photographs were supplied and signed off by Old Mutual and Nedbank