Beyond Funding: Access gap holding back SA’s women-led businesses

At the programme’s launch in Durban on 1 August, the Department of Small Business Development named limited access to procurement, markets, and business development support as barriers sitting alongside limited access to finance, suggesting government’s own framing has begun to move beyond capital as the sole explanation.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2026 report on South Africa, released 30 July by Stellenbosch Business School, the University of Johannesburg, North West University, and the Small Enterprise Development and Finance Agency, scored the country’s entrepreneurial environment at just 3.

Esther Annette Lumumba is Founder and Managing Director of Étoile Advisory Group, a strategic advisory and business development firm helping organisations enter and expand within African markets.