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The Small Business Development Agency (Seda), one of the instruments created by government to support and nature scalable and high impact entrepreneurship ventures, is concerned about the slow pace of skills uptake by young black South Africans, says the Seda Board Chairperson, Dr. Ivor Zwane.

The agency is responding to the figures released this week by Statistics South Africa which indicated that less that 20 percent of South Africa’s black youth occupy skilled positions.

“This is a great concern to us because skilled employees form the golden thread that fuels the entrepreneurship pipeline into the future,” says Dr. Zwane.

“Entrepreneurs are job creators of the future and Seda is gearing up its infrastructure and resources to ensure that there is an appropriate support mechanism for entrepreneurs whose businesses can be scaled up to create employment and positively contribute to the economy.”

“A greater percentage of new ventures are started by individuals who have spent years fine-tuning a skill within a specific area of interest, it is on the basis of this skills-set that they eventually venture into some type of entrepreneurial pursuit.”

In order to fast track the transformation agenda, particularly business ownership patterns in South Africa, we would like to see more black youth entering the entrepreneurship space as a viable career option,” says Dr. Zwane.

Seda will host its annual stakeholder forum in Durban next week where small business owners, business associations and government among others will discuss ways of nurturing entrepreneurship and how to tackle the challenges facing small business owners.

Issued by Seda