South Africa’s Black Industrialists Programme, spearheaded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), is an important intervention that will contribute to changing the country’s industrial landscape, said DTI Industrial Development Incentive Administration Division deputy director-general Malebo Mabitje-Thompson on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Commission conference, in Midrand, Mabitje-Thompson told delegates that the programme aimed to become an inclusive instrument that would help mitigate poverty, inequality and unemployment in South Africa, while stimulating black industrialist-catalysed industrial development.

Neither the industrialisation of a country nor the establishment of a superior manufacturing sector could occur by excluding the majority of the country’s population.

In line with this, Mabitje-Thompson noted that implementing the Black Industrialists Programme would also emphasise the participation of women and youth.

The new initiative, approved last year, aimed to unlock a single forum to provide black industrialists with financial aid, nonfinancial support, market access and advice for those who were already trading in the manufacturing space.

While the programme aimed to develop a more inclusive reindustrialisation of the country’s economy, the selected industrialists would also be required to pull their weight, Mabitje-Thompson indicated.

“There is nothing free here,” she assured, further noting that industrialists were expected to form part of a sustainable solution to deal with  poverty, inequality and unemployment and to change the trajectory of the economy.

Beneficiaries would also need to be directly involved in manufacturing, with the selection process developed to enforce stringent criteria.