Business Unity South Africa (Busa) has welcomed South African Breweries (SAB’s) entrepreneurship campaign aimed at enabling South African entrepreneurs to create 10 000 jobs by 2021.

The entrepreneurial campaign brings together SAB’s initiatives under one integrated package and includes SAB KickStart which focuses on youth entrepreneurship support; the SAB Foundation that invests in entrepreneurs outside SAB’s value chain; SAB Thrive, which aims to invest and transform SAB’s suppliers; SAB Accelerator, which aims to promote black-women entrepreneurship; as well as SAB’s agriculture initiatives that aim to support emerging farmers in the SAB supply chain.

The SAB programme – which provides a package of entrepreneurial support, was launched in Soweto in September.

“Entrepreneurship is the backbone of any economy. In South Africa, small businesses contribute only 65% to employment, relative to a global average of 95%. “There is, therefore, significant scope to improve the effectiveness of public and private support of emerging enterprises,” stated Busa CEO Tanya Cohen.

She added that the SAB’s entrepreneurship initiative was in line with Busa’s approach to black economic empowerment and inclusive economic growth.

Busa identified enterprise development as one of the key enablers of transformation of the South African economy and growing employment opportunities. The potential to add many small and growing businesses owned and controlled by young, black people is an obvious avenue through which to activate inclusive economic growth.

“Systemically supporting entrepreneurship opportunities within SAB’s supply chain will make a meaningful contribution to enterprise development and job creation – both of which are critical to transformation for inclusive economic growth. It is, therefore, against this backdrop that Busa welcomes and congratulates SAB on this initiative,” Cohen concluded.