Here’s a link to my presentation at the GIBS Economic Outlook 2016 conference: Entrepreneurs tackling development challenges
Some key takeaways:
- A new wave of entrepreneurs is emerging in South Africa which addresses pressing social problems, directly and indirectly
- Business models that build bridges across the ‘two-speed’ economy have the best prospects for tackling unemployment and inequality
- Also need to build models that apply to agriculture and manufacturing
- Some financiers have come to the party (see SweepSouth), though far more could be done to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly to enterprises with high social impact
- Solutions to developmental challenges are necessarily multi-sectoral yet in the big business/big labour/big labour configuration, civil society and entrepreneurs are relegated to the margins