Date: 30/01/2006
Source: Department of Trade and Industry
Title: Thabethe: Limpopo Workshop on Gender and Women's Economic Empowerment Strategy


   Keynote address by Deputy Minister of Trade & Industry, E Thabethe, at the Provincial Workshop on Gender and Women's Economic Empowerment Strategy

ADVANCING WOMEN’S ECONOMY EMPOWERMENT THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Mr Collins Chabane, MEC for Economic Development, Environment and Tourism
Mr Roney Chingage, HOD for Economic Development
Ms Sarah Masunga, Chairperson of SAWEN Limpopo
Women Entrepreneurs from all the regions of Limpopo
Members of SAWEN from Limpopo
Official from all spheres of government
Community and Business Leaders
Ladies and Gentlemen

Welcome

Thobela Bommakgwebo ba Limpopo. I would like to thank the MEC Chabane for allowing us as the dti to host this workshop in your province. Many thanks, to the department of Economic Development and in particular Ms Carol Nkambule for all the support. Your financial and human resources contribution are clear indications of how women’s economic empowerment is important to you. To you and South African Women Entrepreneurs Network (SAWEN) under the leadership of Ms Masunga, and in particular Ms Lindiwe Ngcobo for assisting my office and the dti Gender and Women’s Empowerment (GWE) Unit in organising this workshop, we shall be forever grateful for all your support. To all of you, thank you for taking the time to be here. As it is the beginning of a new year, best wishes to all of you and may all business endeavours grow and strengthen. Our resolution for 2006 is to make this year a very successful one for all South African women in business and to realise this we will need all your support.

To all of you, your continued support is highly appreciated. We will also continue to bank on all your valued support as we begin to implement our strategy. This is our seventh consultation forum, after consulting with women from the Northern Cape, the Free State, Western Cape, the North West and the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and last week with KwaZulu-Natal. The support received from all women entrepreneurs has been overwhelming and encouraging to us.

Introduction

I would also like to introduce myself to you as well as my foot soldiers. To those of you whom I have not met, I am Elizabeth Thabethe, one of the two Deputy Ministers of Trade and Industry. My overall responsibilities include dealing with consumer and corporate regulatory matters as well as the issues of the Second Economy as we facilitate the growth of the South African economy. The theme of this conference was carefully selected to reflect our strategic position on this matter. Women are the backbone of the Second Economy and our first woman Deputy President, Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, supports this view wholeheartedly.

I have brought with me Mr Martin Lebea and Ms Unati Motau, both Project Assistants of the Gender and Women’s Empowerment (GWE) Unit in the dti. Ms Mmabatho Matiwane who heads the Unit was unable to join us today due to other work demands. Both my team and I are delighted to be here.

Partnerships

It is so encouraging to see our policy makers, policy implementers and the direct beneficiaries of policies congregated at this forum to discuss ideas and strategies on how to improve service delivery. Such gatherings are of critical importance to us in government, because they visibly demonstrate and cement the partnership between you and ourselves to improve the living standards of all South Africans.

Our forum today is dedicated to ensure that we open and sustain an ongoing dialogue with you on how we can accelerate the improvement of your standard of living. The dti is the key driver of economic growth and has committed itself to champion this very objective.

Outline

Although my input is entitled, “advancing women’s economic empowerment through entrepreneurship”, I want to share with you how the strategic framework on gender and women’s economic empowerment came about.

I would also like to reflect on the importance of this framework and entrepreneurship in growing our economy and reducing the inequalities that we have inherited, as well as how we intend to facilitate further consultations.

Inception of strategic framework

Since its establishment, the GWE Unit has played a key role in successfully transforming the employment profile of the dti to reflect gender equity. As a result, the organizational culture of the department now also caters for the needs of its female employees.

Externally, the dti has also successfully managed to change public perceptions about the role of women in the economy. To this end, we have encouraged and supported women in their entrepreneurial efforts through initiatives such as Technology for Women in Business (TWIB) and SAWEN, amongst others. However, despite all these efforts we have to admit that our policies and programme have not always maximised the full benefits for our women in business and, as a result, many of the challenges that they faced a decade ago continue to exist.

The relative success of our economy since 1994 has also opened up extensive business opportunities for women. However, many of them are unable to exploit these opportunities because they are still trapped in the lower echelons of the economy. Consequently, it has become necessary for the dti to ensure that institutional support for women in business is entrenched and that we continue to search for new and innovative ways to support women in business. We are of the view of growing the economy to accommodate new entrants. Our strategic framework was born out of the realization that we have to embark on an active measurable programme of action to ensure that women, especially those in the second economy, can begin to establish and sustain successful enterprises.

Strategic framework on gender and women’s economic empowerment

Ladies and gentlemen, earlier last year, the Executive Board of the dti approved the further development of the draft Strategic Framework on Gender and Women’s Economic Empowerment for 2005. Its implementation was also simultaneously elevated to one of the department’s major projects in 2005. In keeping with our maxim that the people must govern, we have now embarked on a process of consulting with various stake holders on how best to fast track and maximise our interventions for women entrepreneurs.

In doing so, we want to ensure that the voices of our women are heard and influence this strategic framework. As we consult with you, we also want to educate you and our partners about the programmes of the Department that cater specifically for the needs women and how these operate. We also want to use these consultative forums to get your advice on how other programmes in the department can incorporate and cater for the specific needs of women. We believe that this will be the best way to service you.

You may ask (as many have and will continue to ask), why it is important to have a special strategic framework on gender and women’s economic empowerment? The president and the deputy president have partially responded to this question when they raised their concerns around the second economy.

The need for such a strategic framework is central and critical to strategies needed to urgently address the challenges of the Second Economy. While black people comprise the majority of people in the 2nd economy, women are majority of those affected because they face the double jeopardy of racial and gender discrimination. Hence we need measures that address their specific challenges in the 2nd economy. Their additional family and community responsibilities also make them more vulnerable and thus deserving of the special and or targeted interventions that our strategic framework proposes. Mr Martin Lebea will present these interventions later in the programme and your inputs are very critical.

Role of small business

Ladies and gentlemen, as recently indicated by Minister Mpahlwa, entrepreneurship is the core to building a vibrant and a sustainable small, medium and micro enterprise (SMME) sector. The SMME sector is critical to achieve the key national development objectives of economic growth, employment creation and equity.

Combining formal and informal business activities, SMMEs constitute about 95% of all enterprises in the country. If we exclude all informal activities and self-employment, SMMEs currently absorb between 50% and 60% of the formally employed labour force and contribute at least 30% to GDP, and its contribution is growing.

Consequently it is important that women become a strong and visible component of the sector. In 2005 November, I launched a report titled “South African Women Entrepreneurs – A burgeoning force in our economy”. This report indicates that women comprise 83% of the informal economy, of which 61% of are African women. This category may also be divided into survivalist and informal entrepreneurs.

The report further alerts us to the fact that the concentration of women’s businesses are located in crafts, hawking, personal services and the retail sector that, as we all know, are at the lower echelons of our economy. I know this is the same in this province where rural enterprises are the majority. These are the challenges that we have to address in the strategic framework. Indeed, circumstances like these leave much to be desired.

Women entrepreneurship

The same report also underlines the need to promote entrepreneurship among women, because it says that men are 1.7 times more likely than women to be involved in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial activities also vary significantly from province to province. Gauteng leads with 9.9% compare this with 3.1% in the Northern Province and North West.

At interactions such as this forum we can apply our minds to ways of addressing these challenges and close the gaps. Clearly, as women, we cannot be content that during the period 2001-2002, the total entrepreneurship activity rate for men was 8.1% compared with 4.9% for women. Here in Limpopo, for example, let us see how we can mainstream women mainly in the Tourism, Arts and Craft as well as in the Minerals and Energy Sector. With the strong presence of mines in this province, we need to maximize the opportunities in beneficiation. The time to work with government to ensure our involvement is now. These testify to the urgent need for more government involvement in women’s entrepreneurial development, and hence the dti has chosen entrepreneurship development as a one of the best vehicles for fast track women’s economic empowerment.

Input cost and export potential

Ladies and gentlemen, woman entrepreneurship is definitely part of our main mechanism for accelerating growth in practical terms. Part of the economic reform strategy in relation to this is to lower input costs for small businesses and boost their export potential. For women in particular, it is our intention to work with women through the provision of business information, economic illiteracy, and training for better management of their enterprises as well as capacity building for qualitative and most importantly quantitative product development. Providing women with local markets is where we want to start, proceeding to exposing them to international markets. Addressing the most challenging one, currently we are working on an initiative with our partners to avail easy and affordable access to finance to specifically suit the needs of women’s business. We also intend to develop incentives schemes aimed at supporting those potential growing sectors. Starting and growing sustainable profitable women’s enterprises is what we are going to dedicate most of our resources to for it is the only way women’s economic empowerment can be realised in this country.

As part of implementing our resolution of 2006, on 12 January this year, the dti hosted an urgent consultative workshop on engendering Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative – South Africa (ASGI-SA). Through this workshop, we have successfully managed to identify critical areas of intervention critical as part of fast tracking women’s economic empowerment. Like Deputy President Mlambo-Ngcuka, we as the dti are of the opinion that the success of ASGI-SA will mainly be determined by its positive impact on the second economy. We also believe that if ASGI-SA works for women, it will work for the rest of South Africa as women are of those to benefit. Women have to be afforded with the opportunity of actively participating in ASGI-SA as part of empowering them in growing our economy towards achieving the 6% target growth by 2014. Women in this province are therefore invited to participate in this process. Copies with details of the proposed plan have been distributed in this workshop as part of information sharing. I urge all of you to share it with others not here and identify your role in it.

To conclude, as we proceed, we will be consulting with stakeholders like you in all provinces. A special forum will be held for rural and peri-urban women stakeholders because we want our strategy to provide for the needs of such vulnerable groups. Relevant community-based organisations will also be consulted. It is also important to us that social entrepreneurship is also catered for as a critical economic intervention for alleviating poverty and addressing women’s strategic gender needs that can hinder the success of women entrepreneurship in this country. Such challenges can seriously impede women’s entrepreneurship in this country. After that we will engage various parliamentary structures and eventually Cabinet for final approval of the strategy. To ensure synergies with provinces, we have already established an inter-governmental task group on women’s economic empowerment, where the various government departments engage on a monthly basis. We look forward in partnering with all of you in making this particular intervention a success.

Malibongwe!

Issued by: Department of Trade and Industry
30 January 2006