TNA Reporter
TechnoServe SA has been granted more than R40m from the jobs fund, based on the continuing success of its agricultural projects across several provinces.
Match-funding will come from long- term partners Standard Bank and the funds have been earmarked to expand and accelerate existing job creation programmes in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West and KwaZulu-Natal.
TechnoServe talks directly to enterprise development in South Africa, helping entrepreneurial men and women build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries.
TechnoServe operates in 30 countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia and promotes the growth of the SMME business sector through programmes that provide expert advice, technical and business capacity building and that open up markets for entrepreneurs’ goods and services and link them to finance.
South Africa country director Earl Sampson says: “We partner with businesses and industry leaders who have the insight to see the value of people and their communities. We work directly with entrepreneurs and other industry stakeholders in the field, to ensure enterprises thrive on their own and generate continued income for rural communities across South Africa.
“We work alongside small-scale farmers and farming cooperatives, together with all other actors in the agriculture value chain to ensure these farming enterprises are linked to secure markets. We ensure they are given access to the resources needed to produce and supply to these markets and to thereby, over time, become a viable and sustainable part of the broader agriculture value chain.”
Sampson says TechnoServe South Africa brings a unique combination of personal and institutional in-depth experience and relationships in the private sector together with solid technical skills and in-the-field experience: “We are deeply rooted in local communities and our predominantly local staff understands how to foster innovation and change in entrepreneurial skills and mind sets and how to develop the local institutions needed to support a vibrant private sector.”
Partnering with Massmart in their Direct Farm launch last year, TechnoServe put locally produced small-scale farmers’ produce on the shelves of Massmart. The first harvest of 15 tons of beans was delivered in September and classed grade 1. Post the launch, several hundred tons of produce has been delivered and sold, with substantial growth predicted. – View the original article here
REUTERS