Angus Bowmaker-Falconer has a blunt message for South Africa’s policymakers: the country does not need new policies or more funding. It needs the political will to make what already exists actually work.
That argument sits at the heart of the 2026 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor National Expert Special Report on South Africa, released on 30 July 2026. The report assigns the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem a score of 3.9 out of 10 on the National Entrepreneurship Context Index (NECI), placing South Africa seventh weakest among 56 economies evaluated worldwide. The global average is 4.7. Peer emerging economies leave South Africa well behind: Indonesia scores 5.8, India 6.1, Brazil 4.0. Among the nations assessed, only the United Arab Emirates, at 7.1, ranks significantly higher.
The numbers are damning. But the human reality behind them is more so.
Micro, small and medium enterprises contribute approximately 40 percent of South Africa’s GDP and account for roughly 60 percent of employment. Most fail within their first five years. Set against 32.7 percent unemployment (narrow definition) and GDP growth averaging below 1 percent over the past decade, those failures are not just business statistics. They represent livelihoods lost, families without income, and a generation of young people whose ingenuity finds no institutional footing.
The NECI score reflects performance across 13 interconnected enabling framework conditions, covering access to finance, government support, regulatory burden, market entry, infrastructure quality, and educational preparation for entrepreneurship. The assessment draws on input from over 60 experts, including industry leaders, investors, development practitioners, funding advisors, researchers, economists, policymakers, and educators working daily within South Africa’s entrepreneurial landscape.
Prof Natanya Meyer, acting SARChI Chair in Entrepreneurship Education at the University of Johannesburg and lead author of the report, is careful to name what the country does have. South Africa maintains a sophisticated banking and financial sector, a growing network of business incubators, established universities with strong research capacity, increasing digital adoption, and a youthful population demonstrating remarkable ingenuity in building businesses under difficult conditions. The strengths are real.
The problem is that most entrepreneurs cannot find them.
Government assistance exists, yet many entrepreneurs remain unaware of what is available. Those who do discover support programs encounter delivery systems so scattered and poorly coordinated that accessing help becomes an additional burden on top of the ordinary pressures of running a business. Prof Meyer notes that entrepreneurs who succeed are not those who sidestep bureaucracy but those who master it, a skill requiring knowledge and persistence that many simply do not have.
Meanwhile, countries outperforming South Africa have made deliberate, coordinated policy decisions around digital infrastructure, streamlined business registration, active government backing, and cultural encouragement of entrepreneurship. Bowmaker-Falconer, a research fellow at Stellenbosch Business School and co-author of the report, is direct: the gap between South Africa and comparable developing countries is not a matter of circumstance. It is a matter of choice.
South Africa’s score on social and cultural norms supporting entrepreneurship stands at 4.0 out of 10, well below the global average of 5.2. In practical terms, that number reflects a society in which personal initiative, risk-taking, and the kind of innovation inherent in building a business are not fully valued. Business failure, rather than being treated as a learning experience, carries lasting stigma.
The report’s recommendations span three time horizons. Over the next 18 months, the focus falls on reducing bureaucratic friction through regulatory reform and improved coordination among government agencies, alongside the immediate launch of targeted awareness campaigns aimed at youth and the creation of a single digital platform consolidating information on government program eligibility, application processes, and decision timelines. Subsidized digital tool access for MSMEs, particularly in townships and peri-urban areas, also features in the near-term agenda.
Over five years, the recommendations shift toward building institutional capacity and infrastructure, including formalizing entrepreneurship as a school learning area and expanding broadband access to underserved areas. The longest horizon, spanning 5 to 15 years, targets cultural change: elevating entrepreneurship as a respected career path and reframing failure as part of the process rather than a mark against a person.
The study was developed in partnership by Stellenbosch Business School, the University of Johannesburg, North West University, and the Small Enterprise Development and Finance Agency (SEDFA).
Whether those recommendations translate into action is the question South Africa’s entrepreneurs, many of them already navigating a system that works against them, are left waiting to see answered.