A2Pay

There is high unemployment among the residents of informal settlements, as well as in peri-urban and rural areas, yet these people have to spend money travelling long distances to nearby towns to buy prepaid products such as electricity and airtime. A2Pay offers an opportunity that addresses both these problems.

A2PAYs Community Access to Wireless Retail Technologies project is a result of innovative technological research. The technology allows local entrepreneurs to sell prepaid products to informal settlement, peri-urban and rural consumers, thereby creating a community incentive for the unemployed to earn a sustainable income. This project will reduce the need for rural people to travel to urban centers to buy prepaid products, which include electricity and airtime, thereby saving money.

A2Pay has signed formal agreements with key players and service providers in the mining, manufacturing and construction sectors to allow the presence of these fixed and mobile devices in their vicinities. The applicant has also partnered with Stop Suffering Health Centre, a non-profit organisation affiliated to the Universal Church and other religious bodies in rural, informal and peri-urban communities throughout the country. The Universal Church has 4.4 million people, most of whom are concentrated in rural areas and will be the primary target for this initiative, although it will be open to other participants as well.

A2Pay is targeted to create 5,026 new permanent jobs. Projects are mostly in the Gauteng area but its quickly growing into the North West Province.

“When I presented the concept of a self-contained kiosk selling cellular products as a job creation concept to the Jobs Fund a couple of years ago I envisaged that we would create 2 or 3 jobs per kiosk. And so it turned out. Admittedly through product and concept innovation we expect to lift that to 5 per kiosk. Then out of the blue we found two guys. We liked their attitude and decided to support them to the hilt. Within a couple of months they’ve created more than 120 jobs from one fixed site. We’ve certainly faced our challenges and climbed our mountains in implementing our project but, in my mind, their heart-warming story is what it’s all about. It makes it all worthwhile”, Bert Roux, Executive Chairman, A2Pay.

Project contact: Jon Harris
011 706 2727
082 349 2412
jon@a2pay.co.za

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Harambee

Harambee’s application for funding to the Jobs Fund in 2011 was in the Support for Work Seekers Funding Window, which seeks to link active work-seekers, especially the youth, to formal sector opportunities and job placement.

The Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator helps thousands of young South Africans to get and keep their first job, in a way that simultaneously addresses the needs of employers and employees. Through extensive consultation with employers around their recruitment needs and challenges faced in hiring young people, Harambee has structured a rigorous bridging programme that directly addresses the needs of employers.

This project has placed 10,116 unemployed youth into permanent positions and is striving to create a sustainable business model for the project. We recognise Harambee for their dedication to getting young people into the workforce, for embodying the Jobs Fund principles of developing game-changing models to create jobs and for exploring opportunities to increase the sustainability of their work.

Project contact: Bryony Maxwell
011 593 0500
084 777 2901
bryony@harambee.co.za

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Tongaat Hulett

This project falls under the Enterprise development window and is an excellent example of private companies working with government to create jobs. The Enterprise Development window looks for projects that build sustainable enterprises that innovate, develop skills and human resources and enhance productivity to remain competitive.

Tongaat Hulett Ltd operates in four districts of KZN: Ilembe, Uthungulu, Zululand, and Umkhanyakunde. The 2011 SA Census data paints a grim picture of these deep rural areas, where the vast majority live in poverty: less than 20% have access to basic utilities in these districts and just 40% have access to water and electricity. Approximately 60% of the residents earn no income and a further 20% earn less than the minimum wage.

Over the next two years, Tongaat Hulett will develop 12,000 hectares of underutilised land to sustain cane production, and provide skills to the local communities with the goal of creating independent, viable and sustainable SMMEs.

The project will develop communal land to sustain cane production and provide skills to local communities that will eventually result in independent, viable and sustainable SMMEs.

To date the project has created 534 new jobs with plans to yield a total of 2,874.

Project contact: Garreth Sparks
083 783 7609
032 439 5803
garreth.sparks@tongaat.co.za

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Akwandze

Akwandze is a sugarcane development finance organisation that seeks to negotiate the best terms and manage funds for sugarcane in Mpumalanga. For this project Akwandze has partnered with TSB Sugar the Mpumalanga Cane Growers Association and LIMA rural development.

This initiative has created 680 jobs, has way exceeded its projected targets and aims to nearly double the sugarcane production by farmers in the Nkomazi area.

Akwandze’s fund management activities cover loan approval, disbursement, and monitoring and recovery services, together with the implementation of risk mitigation and management mechanisms. These are services that are not regularly available to small business owners and are a valuable contribution to the industry.

The initiative is looking to achieve these levels of sugarcane production growth by recapitalizing the irrigation infrastructure of 1,281 small to medium scale black sugarcane farmers. This recapitalization will result in the rehabilitation of 10,000 hectares of sugarcane lands. Akwandze will extend favourable loan facilities to these farmers allowing them to access production inputs such as plant material, fertilizer, herbicides, etc. Access to finance will be accompanied by a package offering of farmer support services including training, on-site technical support and capacity building. The combination of irrigation infrastructure, technical training and support and access to finance will result in improved sugarcane production methods, increased production yields and saleable sugarcane to off-take partners, improving revenue generation and sustainable job creation

Project contact Mduduzi Nkambule Akwandze
013 791 1291
082 852 9195
nkambulem@tsb.co.za

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