SAB Entrepreneurship Programme

SAB Entrepreneurship has been contributing and growing enterprise development in South Africa for the past 15+ years and will continue to do so. As one of the leading corporates in South Africa, SAB is committed to developing young entrepreneurial potential in South Africa.

SAB Entrepreneurship promotes business awareness through training, supplying grants as start-up capital and providing post-training mentorship and assistance during the set-up phase of the business.

The spirit of entrepreneurship has been at the heart of SAB from our beginnings. The creation of SAB KickStart, SAB Foundation, SAB Accelerator and SAB Thrive shows our commitment to providing a tangible and sustainable future for South Africans. Our programmes continue to provide invaluable coaching and financial support to the businesses we partner with to drive economic growth and add to job creation.

SAB KickStart

SAB KickStart is a youth entrepreneurial programme aimed at assisting small business owners who are between the ages of 18 and 35 who want to elevate their businesses to new heights. The programme was first developed in 1995 as a youth enterprise development programme to alleviate poverty amongst South Africa’s previously disadvantaged youth and foster a spirit of entrepreneurship. We believe in the power of youth as key drivers of our country’s economy. As a result, we are committed to enabling a game-changing impact of empowering local youth owned businesses to become reliable suppliers to industry organizations sustainably.

SAB KickStart is SAB’s flagship enterprise development programme, we have invested over R100 million in entrepreneurial development, supported 24 558 entrepreneurs and empowered 3 458 youth-owned businesses in South Africa. The programme has extended across the continent in various forms and now takes place in at least 6 countries in Africa.

SAB Foundation

The SAB Foundation invests in entrepreneurs and social innovators – with an emphasis on services and products that benefit women, youth, people living in rural areas and persons living with disabilities – who show the potential and commitment to grow their businesses and create jobs.

Set up in 2010 as one element of SAB’s broad-based black economic empowerment transaction, SAB Zenzele, the SAB Foundation is an independent trust that annually invests millions of rands towards developing entrepreneurship in South Africa and ensuring that low-income communities are uplifted.

SAB Accelerator & SAB Thrive Fund

The first programme, SAB Accelerator, is focused on supporting Black-owned suppliers in need of business development and technical support to grow further into the SAB supply chain. SAB Accelerator attempts to scale their service or product offering to enhance their efficiency by enabling them to improve performance and capacity. The programme has 3 sub-programmes namely, Start-up, Catalyst and Amplify.

The second programme is the SAB Thrive Fund, a fund focused on supporting existing Black-owned suppliers in need of capital to grow. Simultaneously, SAB Thrive Fund supports existing suppliers improve their Black ownership credentials by providing them with access to 100% Black-owned capital. The SAB Thrive Fund is an Enterprise & Supplier Development (E&SD) Fund powered by the Awethu Project which is the Black Private Equity Fund Manager that owns a majority of the Fund (51%) – enabling this intervention to speak to both the spirit and the letter of the B-BBEE codes by creating shared value for both SAB and Black-owned businesses.