Ten years ago, circular economy principles and regenerative thinking were not mainstream. Conversations around embodied carbon, material transparency and lifecycle thinking were niche in many
Building inclusive futures
through SMMEs
There is only one solution to South Africa’s devastating, society-breaking unemployment figures: more jobs.
Those jobs will have to come from entrepreneurs, and small- and medium-sized enterprises.
The Waterfront has long been committed to enterprise development. The most recent Economic Impact Report (2020) showed a real growth of 6,2% over the previous year in development enterprise, with turnover growing in five years from R139 million to R375 million.
With about half our 800 tenants being small businesses, our approach to enterprise development is responsive to emerging needs, both in our supply chain and across our precinct. Our support is built on the foundation of relationships and partnerships, and has market access at its heart. We also have programmes in place to support the most vulnerable and grassroots entrepreneurs.
SOLVE amplifies this work through agile interventions where particular areas of challenge have been identified, including:
- Providing lab/prototyping space for SMMEs
- Convening organisations working to support SMMEs to learn and develop an ecosystem approach to SMME development
- Providing capacity building, access to funding and mentoring support to our SMMEs through our SMME portal
- Working to ensure supply chain access
- Working to open up market access
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