WATCH: Make scale-ups heroes

“As government, we have a responsibility to enforce regulatory compliance in the SMME sector and close businesses that are trading illegally.” These words, apparently barked by minister of small business development, Stella “I’m-too-fabulous-for-this-portfolio” Ndabeni-Abrahams, who President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed to supposedly help grow and nurture the engine room of SA’s economy,  were roundly rebuked on social media recently.

But here’s the thing. I was reminded of the president’s address to the 25th Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town two years ago, in which he invoked the advice given to him by Alibaba founder Jack Ma at Ramaphosa’s inaugural investment conference. To discuss local scale-up programmes, Michael Avery is joined by Lisa Klein, who helped conceptualise and set up the SA SME Fund; Alison Collier, MD of Endeavor SA; and Melvyn Lubega, co-founder of edtech Go1.