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South Africa has no shortage of entrepreneurs who know how to survive.
The latest State of the SMME in South Africa report found that 32.1% of surveyed small businesses have been operating for more than 20 years. Yet 39.1% still employ just one to five people.
That contrast may be one of the most important findings in the report.
The research, conducted by World Wide Worx for the Shoprite Group among 800 SMMEs, suggests that longevity does not necessarily translate into scale. A business can survive for decades without becoming a significant employer or moving into a completely different level of commercial activity.
And that raises a bigger question: is South Africa’s small business problem really about getting more businesses started, or is it about helping existing businesses grow?
There are some encouraging signs.
The proportion of businesses describing themselves as growing and expanding increased from 33% in the previous survey to 42%. Meanwhile, 85% expect moderate to high growth over the next year, while 53.6% reported net profit after tax of more than 10%.
So the appetite for growth appears to be there.
The problem is what happens when an SMME actually tries to make that jump.
Customers may matter more than another loan
Access to markets was identified as the biggest requirement for growth, cited by 56.9% of respondents. Financial support followed at 39.5%, while 29.7% pointed to digital tools and platforms.
That is an important distinction.
Entrepreneurs do need capital, but money alone does not create a sustainable business. A small company needs customers, contracts and predictable demand.
In fact, 78.1% of respondents said regular orders from large corporations were important or very important to their businesses.
This puts corporate procurement in an interesting position.
A major contract can give an SMME the revenue needed to hire staff, buy equipment and expand. But it can also expose another problem: the business must have enough working capital and operational capacity to fulfil the contract.
That is where finance, market access and business support have to work together.
South Africa’s funding gap is still obvious
Despite 70.8% saying better access to funding would improve their competitiveness, 90.9% currently rely on their own resources and personal networks.
Only 9.7% use bank loans, while 57.4% have never applied for funding.
Private investment is even less common. Just 2.1% currently use private investors, although 46.2% say it is a funding mechanism they would like to access.
This tells us something important about the SMME conversation.
South Africa does not necessarily need entrepreneurs to simply survive longer. It needs more of those long surviving businesses to cross the difficult gap between being a small operation and becoming a larger employer.
That means better access to customers, procurement opportunities, working capital, systems and practical support.
The report’s message is ultimately less about celebrating entrepreneurial resilience and more about asking what comes next.
Because surviving for 20 years is impressive.
But if a business survives for 20 years and still cannot afford to employ more people, the question should not only be how resilient that entrepreneur is.
It should also be what is preventing the business from scaling.
