Business Partners launches Entrepreneur of the Year Award to support small businesses

Business Partners launched its Entrepreneur of the Year Award on Tuesday, an award that ranks among the most long-standing and prestigious of its kind in this country and which aims to foster growth in small and medium businesses by successful entrepreneurs.

David Morobe, executive general manager of Impact Investing at SME financing company Business Partners said at an online event that the award, which was started in 1989 and stopped only during the Covid pandemic, aimed to honour entrepreneurs “who don’t give up on challenges.”

There are award categories for different sizes of smaller businesses and for different types of entrepreneurs: Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year, SME Entrepreneur of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year for medium-sized businesses, Job Creator of the Year, Innovator of the Year, Impact Entrepreneur of the Year, and Overall Entrepreneur of the Year.

In the 2023, the competition attracted over 350 entries, and last year there were more than 650 entries. Morobe said there was a high quality of entrepreneurs in the last competition, and the greater stability and confidence in the small business sector, as indicated by the SME Index for the last quarter of 2024, might spur even more entries in the 2025 year.

He said business confidence in the SME sector had noticeably improved last year after the formation of the Government of National Unity, and he hoped the GNU would continue, as the business confidence it had generated was vital to the growth of the SME sector, which in turn formed a major part of the growth of the overall economy and job creation.

For example, the SME Index had shown that some 80% of SME business owners polled expected their businesses to grow in 2025, 64% were confident about obtaining access to finance to sustain their businesses, while 72% expressed confidence in their ability to attract talented staff. SMEs had played a pivotal role in the post-recovery of the economy after the Covid pandemic, he said.

Business Partners area manager Lawrance Ramotala said this month that the contribution of small businesses to youth development is not only practical but deeply transformational.

“In many cases, SMEs are the first to take a chance on young people, whether by hiring them as first-time employees, helping them launch their first business, or partnering with them as suppliers.What we’re seeing is a groundswell of youth entrepreneurship that’s rooted in community enterprise,” he said.

“This is particularly evident in township settings, where formal employment is often out of reach. In these areas, youth-led micro and small businesses are not only becoming viable alternatives to traditional work but also creating employment for others in their communities,” he said.

Morobe said the competition provides an opportunity for entrepreneurs to showcase their business excellence, services, and products to a wider community. The entrepreneurs get to interact with other businesspeople, organisations, and institutions they otherwise would not have been able to access, and it exposes entrepreneurs to opportunities for businesses to tap into improvements and innovations in their existing businesses.

Visit:www.businessreport.co.za