Driving economic growth with the power of small businesses : the University of Stellenbosch Business School’s Small Business Academy

Abstract

The University of Stellenbosch Business School, known as SBS, forms a part of the University of Stellenbosch, a leading global research university. Located in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa, SBS offers postgraduate-level academic and executive programmes in Business Management and Administration, Development Finance, and Futures Studies to students from all over the globe. The Small Business Academy, a project of the University of Stellenbosch Business School (SBS), is a multi-stakeholder educational initiative that upskills and uplifts South African small-business owners in low-income communities to capacitate them for long-term business success. The chapter highlights the Small Business Academy (SBA) and how it serves as a development vehicle for economic growth and decent work as set forth in Sustainable Development Goal 8, within a country where the informal sector and small businesses are in desperate need of capacity building interventions. Key stages of the SBA's development will be conveyed: how the project began, how its target population was determined, and ways in which its development programme was adapted to better serve its participants and stakeholders, including the addition of coaching and mentoring as a key enabler for participant progress. Relevant lessons learned and success factors for implementing learning interventions in complex environments are shared, particularly the importance of programmatic agility and the holistic benefits of directly engaging stakeholders in the program. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the project’s impacts and contributions toward SDG 8.