South Africa does not suffer from a shortage of entrepreneurs. Every year, thousands of South Africans launch businesses driven by innovation, survival, necessity, ambition and the hope of economic participation. Yet despite the growing entrepreneurial activity in the country, too few businesses successfully scale into sustainable, growth-stage enterprises capable of creating meaningful employment and long-term economic value.
One of the most persistent barriers standing in the way of entrepreneurial growth remains access to funding; but the reality is far more complex than simply a lack of available money. Research across South Africa’s entrepreneurship and SME sector consistently shows that the real challenge lies in the disconnect between entrepreneurs and the structures required to make them fundable, investment-ready and scalable.
A 2025 South African MSME funding policy review found that 73% of entrepreneurs identified access to finance as the single biggest hurdle facing their businesses, ahead of market access and regulatory challenges. The same research also highlighted deeper structural problems within the ecosystem itself, including weak financial readiness, poor separation between personal and business finances, limited collateral, insufficient business records, and a lack of understanding around funding instruments and investment requirements.
In my humble opinion, this is where the conversation around entrepreneurship in South Africa often becomes oversimplified. A common assumption is that funders are unwilling to support entrepreneurs, and that’s not true.
In reality, many investors, banks, DFIs and enterprise development institutions are actively searching for viable businesses to support. The challenge is that many entrepreneurs are still operating without the structures, financial systems, governance readiness, compliance maturity, market traction or ecosystem support required to de-risk investment decisions. In many instances, entrepreneurs are not failing because they lack ideas. They are failing because they lack scalable support infrastructure.
Some of the recurring barriers that prevent entrepreneurs from scaling successfully are limited access to growth-stage funding, lack of collateral and credit history, weak financial management systems, insufficient mentorship and business development support, fragmented ecosystem collaboration, and low exposure to investors and commercial networks.
For many entrepreneurs, particularly black-owned SMEs and women owned businesses, the problem is not only accessing capital; it is accessing credibility, visibility and strategic relationships.
This is why platforms such as the EMPOWAEntrepreneurs Funding Summit & Pitching Festival are becoming increasingly important within South Africa’s entrepreneurial landscape. The value of these platforms extends beyond funding conversations alone. Their real value lies in ecosystem integration.
Entrepreneurs do not only need investors. They need exposure. They need networks. They need investor readiness. They need procurement access. They need legal and governance support. They need mentorship. They need platforms that help them transition from survivalist businesses into scalable enterprises. And through all of this, they need a partner that will hold their hand as they scale from a viable small business, into a big player in their sector.
This can be achieved through a structured ecosystem that is focused on practical economic participation. This becomes particularly important within the South African context, where many entrepreneurs still operate outside formal funding systems. Without formalisation, visibility and ecosystem participation, scaling becomes extremely difficult.
If South Africa is serious about building an inclusive economy, we must get serious about creating stronger collaboration between the private sector, financial institutions, DFIs, enterprise development agencies, educational institutions and ecosystem platforms capable of bridging the gap between entrepreneurship and capital deployment. It will require that all actors in this sector rethink what entrepreneurial support actually means. It’s clear that funding alone is not enough.
The future of entrepreneurship in South Africa will depend on our ability to build ecosystems that combine funding access, investor readiness, business education, market access, mentorship, visibility, digital integration and ecosystem collaboration. And this must be done without punishing the entrepreneurs for what they don’t know. Many entrepreneurs are motivated largely by the need to separate themselves from a legacy of poverty, so therein lies an opportunity to usher them into a greater understanding about how to grow their vision beyond sustenance into the space of growth and scalability.
When entrepreneurs are supported holistically, businesses become more sustainable, more investable and more scalable. And when businesses scale, economies grow.
That is the real opportunity South Africa must now unlock.
Written by Thulisa Bianca Sosibo, Managing Executive: EmpowaEntrepreneurs