Document: State of Entrepreneurship in South Africa

The first annual conference on the “State of Entrepreneurship in South Africa” was held on 19 November 2009, at the FNB Conference Centre in Sandton. This conference was part of a series of activities within Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), a Kauffman Foundation global initiative that strives to foster national debates on entrepreneurship around the world.

In 2009, it is estimated that three million people worldwide, from 8 800 organisations, participated in 25 000 activities across 87 countries. The headline panel of the FNB-Endeavor conference on 19 November was a mixture of policy makers, entrepreneurs, academics, and funding providers. Their mandate was to drive a general discussion on entrepreneurship in South Africa with the underlying goal to set the tone for the five subsequent breakout panels that were to follow later in the day.