Small Business Development Agency

The Small Business Development Agency has shifted its primary core business away from Enterprise Finance towards Education and Business Development. The fundamental change in this area of development is the change from loan provision to grant provision for young entrepreneurs and small business owners.

The SBDA no longer offers loan finance to young entrepreneurs; the agency provides financial support in the form of micro-finance grants to young entrepreneurs and youth cooperatives.  

The objective of the SBDA Grant Funding is to provide young entrepreneurs with an opportunity to access both the financial and non-financial business development support to establish their survivalist businesses.

The programme focuses on youth entrepreneurs who are just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential but are not yet fully developed. The Grant Funding starts from R100 000 to a maximum of R2 000 000 for any small business or SME. For agriculture and technology-related projects, the maximum threshold is R4 500 000. The SBDA continues with efforts directed at economic participation offering a range of products, programmes and services to young entrepreneurs in need, albeit as a secondary focus.

As a national government agency that is mandated with the holistic development of youth in South Africa, the SBDA has a huge task that it cannot accomplish on its own.  The SBDA is therefore always looking to establish partnerships with like-minded organisations and institutions in the private, government and civil society sectors so that youth development programmes can be expanded and scaled up. In this light, if your organisation or institution would like to partner with the SBDA to develop, run or scale up a Small development programme, kindly send us an email 

Criteria for partnership consideration:

• The potential partner must be a) a private company; or b) a state-owned company (SOC); or c) a state-owned enterprise (SOE) or d) an international organisation;
• The potential partner must bring forward a collaboration programme/project that focuses on a) job creation; b) enterprise development and c) market linkages;
• The potential partner must have funding for the proposed programme/project or must be able co-fund it.