{"id":5023,"date":"2019-05-03T15:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/?p=5023"},"modified":"2019-05-03T16:21:02","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T13:21:02","slug":"rainbow-nation-to-beat-its-massive-unemployment-with-smes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/rainbow-nation-to-beat-its-massive-unemployment-with-smes\/","title":{"rendered":"Rainbow Nation to Beat Its Massive Unemployment with SMEs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Republic of South Africa has pledged to invest <strong>$95M<\/strong> in its <strong>small and medium enterprises and startups<\/strong>. Therefore, it has launched a fund headed by some of the country&#8217;s leading businesspeople. &#8220;With this fund, small and medium enterprises with growth potential would be identified and put through partnerships with our members who would offer them support and access to new markets,&#8221; CEO of the Discovery Group and the project\u2019s major investor <strong>Adrian Gore<\/strong> said. The initiative, he believes, will resolve one of the most pressing issues facing the country: although RSA has the second-largest economy on the continent, nearly <strong>28%<\/strong> of its citizens are on the dole.<\/p>\n<p>According to the World Bank, <strong>SMEs<\/strong> play a major role in developing countries as the vehicle of growth for both economic activity and job creation. They <strong>contribute up to 60% of total employment in emerging economies<\/strong> and up to <strong>40% of their GDP<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>RSA has <strong>the oldest business incubator<\/strong> (in operation since 2000) and the most mature startup ecosystem in Africa. Its venture capital industry is quite tiny compared to those of Israel and the U.S. but well-established. More local startups in a variety of tech sub-sectors such as FinTech, TravelTech, and EdTech are using innovative technologies such as <strong>the Internet of things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain<\/strong>. The \u201crainbow nation\u201d has proved, yet again, that every cloud has a silver lining: the latest report conducted by Venture Capital for Africa concluded that a strong effort from both the public and the private sectors to reduce high rates of unemployment has greatly helped to make <strong>Johannesburg and Cape Town<\/strong> the most vibrant <strong>entrepreneurial hubs<\/strong> in the region \u2013 thanks to SMEs that overcome changes and turbulence more smoothly than big companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Republic of South Africa has pledged to invest $95M in its small and medium enterprises and startups. Therefore, it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5023"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5035,"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023\/revisions\/5035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ufuture.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}