Opportunities for Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises in green economy to grow

STATEMENT BY THE CITY’S MAYORAL COMMITTEE MEMBER FOR ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES AND ASSET MANAGEMENT, ALDERMAN JAMES VOS.

The City’s Strategic Business Partner GreenCape is a key driver in the R488 million Green Outcomes Fund (GOF) that was launched in January to grow green Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises (SMMEs) in South Africa.

The GOF is a first-of-its-kind structure, in which local South African fund managers are incentivised to increase investment in green SMMEs.

As a City, we recognised the need to move towards models where economic growth is separate from natural resource use while supporting climate change mitigation methods. In South Africa, this means investment in businesses that can generate valid green outcomes, while creating jobs, including in energy, water, waste, infrastructure and land management.

This will become more important as we move towards planning a post COVID-19 economic strategy.

The partnership between GreenCape and National Treasury’s Jobs Fund was officially signed on 31 January 2020. The Green Outcomes Fund provides outcomes-based matched funding to local investment funds to support investments into SMMEs that make a tangible contribution to South African green economy, as well as job and enterprise creation in priority impact areas.

This has been made possible by catalytic grant support from the RMB Fund, a division of the FirstRand Foundation. The local catalytic finance partners of the Green Outcomes Fund are: Mergence Investment Managers, Edge Growth Ventures, Conservation International Ventures and Business Partners South Africa.

The fund is primarily geared towards accelerated job creation and offer practical and lasting solutions to South Africa’s employment challenges.

The Green Outcomes Fund, in partnership with the Jobs Fund, will incentivise the local catalytic finance partners that it has partnered with to invest in green businesses, as well as track verifiable green metrics. Investment funds partnering with the GOF can choose from a portfolio of green outcomes metrics when selecting green SMMEs to invest in.

The Green Outcomes Fund aims to achieve clearly defined green outcomes, encourage greater capital allocation to green businesses by local fund managers, and catalyse increased and higher quality, consistent, reporting of green impacts.

GreenCape is the Green Outcomes Fund implementation partner, primarily accountable to the Jobs Fund for delivery and reporting on the green outcomes measurement and evaluation. The UCT Graduate School of Business’ Bertha Centre for Social Innovation led the design and fundraising for the Green Outcomes Fund development and continues as the primary knowledge partner.

Green SMMEs can find more information and apply to be considered for funding by visiting https://www.greencape.co.za/content/sector/the-green-outcomes-fund .