Back small business and SA will regain its economic competitiveness

South Africa’s export growth forecast could be constrained by world growth, which the World Bank is expecting to slow to 2.9% this year and 2.8% in 2020.This anticipated slowdown will affect South Africa’s fortunes adversely if the trading focus continues to be with our traditional markets, such as China, Germany and the US.The headlines for the past decade have been “Africa Rising” and being “open for business” The fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa – Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana and Ethiopia. Thus the urgency of growing our intra-Africa trade should be on the strategic radar of every South African leader and company, including small businesses. Small businesses are not going to be the engines of economic growth and job creation if the thinking is that they need to be strong and get most of their sales and income from the home country before venturing beyond.