Not many applications from high-impact, job-rich sectors, such as agroprocessing, agriculture, information and communication technology (ICT) and manufacturing, were being received for the South African government’s R9-billion Jobs Fund, project origination head and Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) sustainable communities head Xolani Ndungane said on Tuesday.

“Agroprocessing and agriculture employ large numbers of people and the thresholds and barriers to entry are much lower, so a larger number of rural community members can be employed without necessarily having to go into an expensive training programme,” he told Engineering News Online at a workshop presented by the Black Business Council and the DBSA, in Midrand.

Ndungane said he was concerned about the capacity to implement job creation projects in certain areas in the country.

“Unemployment is not centralised; we have massive unemployment in the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga. There are great opportunities in agriculture, mining and fishing in these areas, but we do not receive any applications to take advantage of our money and create jobs in those areas,” he stated.

Ndungane added that the ICT sector was an important hub in terms of creating sustainable jobs, which could, in turn, create more opportunities, “It has a rolling effect, once you have ICT skills in a community you unlock that community in terms of communication and access to information.”

He indicated that the Jobs Fund aimed to drive projects in the abovementioned sectors and that discussions with relevant organisations were being held in this regard, while the fund’s origination team was aggressively going out to assist in structuring projects, form partnerships and fund projects.

The creation of the Jobs Fund was announced by President Jacob Zuma during his State of the Nation Address in 2011 and it was managed by the DBSA. It is aimed at piloting and up-scaling existing innovative approaches to create 150 000 sustainable jobs over three years.

“Our target is higher, not just in terms of jobs, but also in terms of the amount of money we bring in from the private sector to co-fund the initiatives,” Ndungane noted.

He said the Jobs Fund was hoping to raise an additional R10-billion from the private sector to bring the available funds to R19-billion.

Following the Jobs Fund’s first and second calls for proposals, a total of 65 projects had been approved. Of these, 17 were in the public sector, 32 in the nongovernmental/nonprofit sector and 16 in the private sector.

“We want more private sector businesses to be funded to create sustainable jobs,” Ndungane noted.

The fund granted a total of R3.43-billion to these projects, which was matched by R3.12-billion in funding from the private sector, totalling about R6.5-billion at a co-funding ratio of 1:0.9. However, Ndungane indicated that the Jobs Funds aimed to push this ratio up to 1:3.

The 65 projects were expected to create 97 253 permanent jobs.

The majority of the approved projects were in the services sector – receiving funding of R796-million. This was followed by the agricultural and forestry sectors with funding of R537-million.

“We have done well. We did have teething problems at the beginning, but we are over these now,” Ndungane added.

The Jobs Fund opened its third bidding round in December last year. The latest window focused on enterprise development and infrastructure investment initiatives and would close on March 15.