The third bidding round for employment-rich initiatives seeking to access funding from the South African government’s R9-billion Jobs Fund has officially opened, with 54 projects having been approved after two earlier bidding rounds – these projects will collectively receive funding worth R3-billion.

The fund, which was officially launched in June 2011 and is managed by the Development Bank of Southern Africa, received more than 3 500 applications during the initial bidding rounds and 27 projects have signed implementation agreements for funding of more than R1-billion.

Jobs Fund investment committee chairperson Frans Baleni, who is also general-secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, indicates that the approved projects should create over 65 000 new permanent jobs in South Africa by 2015 and place 42 000 unemployed people in existing vacancies.

He reports that the third request for applications will focus specifically on enterprise development and infrastructure programmes.

No applications will, therefore, be received for the other two thematic areas, dealing with ‘support for work seekers’ and ‘institutional capacity’, as these were too oversubscribed during the previous funding rounds.

The enterprise development window will be open to innovative commercial initiatives that seek to combine profitability with a high social impact. The infrastructure programme window, meanwhile, will cofinance light infrastructure investments that could unlock job creation potential in a particular area.

The fund is open to private, public and nongovernmental organisations and Baleni gave assurance that “significant progress” had been made in establishing efficient systems to process large numbers of applications. He acknowledged that there had been problems earlier on, but stressed that it was a new funding instrument in South Africa

The applications are managed through a Web-based system, which also enables applicants to monitor the progress of their applications.
The third call for proposals opened on December 3, 2012, and will close at 17:00 on March 15, 2013.

Applications must be submitted online via the Jobs Fund website, which can be found at www.jobsfund.org.za.