Small Business Deputy Minister Elizabeth Thabethe
South Africans needed to become more entrepreneurial and create their own jobs, instead of expecting government to create jobs or rely on private-sector employment.
“We need to become masters of our own destinies,” Small Business Development Deputy Minister Elizabeth Thabethe said on Thursday.
Further, to meet South Africa’s own national developmental aims, in line with the National Development Plan, innovative people, particularly women, needed to lead the way, create employment and produce goods and services.
Mpumalanga Economic Development and Tourism MEC Skhumbuzo Eric Kholwane emphasised the need for entrepreneurs who embrace technology.
“We want more women, especially those in rural areas to be aware of the benefits of technological interventions as they strive to grow their respective small enterprises into big businesses,” he said.
More innovative and entrepreneurial businesswomen could make a “meaningful contribution” to the creation of jobs, with government playing its own role in “revolutionising” its entrepreneurship drive to ensure that small, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs) find their rightful and critical role in taking the country forward.
“The reality is that SMMEs are critical to the economy of the country, and are an important link in creating much needed employment,” Thabethe said, adding: “Women will be in the centre of this revolution because they are economic drivers and there will be no economic growth without them.”