Realising the staggering youth unemployment in the country and within the Blouberg Municipality, a
development programme is being implemented to increase and support youth owned enterprises.
As part of Soutpan Solar Power’s Enterprise Development programme eight local youth businesses
have been identified to receive business development support. This support will take the form of
skills training; funding of material and equipment; compliance and registrations; as well as business
mentorship. The view is to adopt a holistic approach to development which entails the deployment
of funding, business mentorship, building of institutional capacity and possible market access where
necessary.
“Our beneficiary communities have over 42% unemployed youth, demonstrating a staggering need
for a formalised approach to youth owned enterprise development, which is the objective of helping
these entities to grow and expand,” explained Harrisinah Theka, Economic Development Officer for
Soutpan Solar Power.
Following a selection process, which included the youth business owners presenting to a panel, the
eight companies were announced, across broad sectors, namely crop farming, manufacturing,
agro-processing, and poultry farming, amongst others. The sectors focussed are agriculture, services,
agro processing and manufacturing and these sectors are aligned to the resources that the
community has available to them. ![]()
The programme has targeted the communities within the Blouberg Municipality, including
Indermark, Senwabarwana (also known as Bochum), Alldays, and Devrede to successfully identify
candidates. To increase efficiency, the programme collaborated with a number of entities to draw on
available databases and pertinent information. These included Blouberg Municipality, National
Youth Development Agency (NYDA), Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA), Venetia Diamond
Mine, Limpopo Economic Development Agency (LEDA), the Department of Agriculture and the
Department of Rural Development.
According to Statistics SA there is a 39.2% level of unemployment and a 47.2% level of youth
unemployment. These numbers made us realise that there is a lot that we need to do as Soutpan
Solar Power to formalise and develop youth owned enterprises. The project is aiming at identifying
the enterprises and supporting them to grow and expand with whatever support they might require,
be it training, material and equipment support, compliance, and mentoring.
