National Empowerment Fund

ABOUT US

Strategic Role and Positioning

The NEF’s role is to support Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BB-BEE).

As the debate concerning what constitutes meaningful and sustainable BB-BEE evolves, the NEF anticipates future funding and investment requirements to help black individuals, communities and businesses achieve each element of the Codes of Good Practice. These include a focus on preferential procurement, broadening the reach of black equity ownership, transformation in management and staff and preventing the dilution of black shareholding.

The NEF differentiates itself not only with a focused mandate for BB-BEE, but by also assuming a predominantly equity-based risk to maximise the Empowerment Dividend. Reward should balance the risk with the application of sound commercial decisions to support national priorities and government policy such as the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) or targeted investments through the Department of Trade and Industry’s (the dti’s) Industrial Policy Framework (IPF).

The work of the NEF therefore straddles and complements other Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) by allowing the organisations to work in close collaboration in the promotion of BB-BEE. With them, the NEF can enhance other DFIs and their mandates by sharing its specialist sector expertise and knowledge of BB-BEE.

Legislative mandate

Established by the National Empowerment Fund Act No 105 of 1998 (NEF Act), the National Empowerment Fund (the NEF) is a driver and thought-leader in promoting and facilitating black economic participation by providing financial and non-financial support to black empowered businesses, and by promoting a culture of savings and investment among black people. The operations of the NEF are governed by the Public Finance Management Act No 1 of 1991 (PFMA), including the National Treasury Regulations, the King III Report on Governance for South Africa and the Protocol on Corporate Governance in the Public Sector, 2002.

Vision

The NEF’s Vision is to become the leading provider of innovative transformation solutions for an economically inclusive South Africa.

Values

SERVICES

The NEF implements its mandate in three ways:

Asset Management

By structuring accessible retail savings products for black people through its Asset Management Division, which is a custodian of certain equity allocations in State-Allocated Investments (SAIs), the NEF aims to foster a culture of savings and investment among its beneficiaries.

Fund Management

Fund Management, as a facilitator of the Codes of Good Practice of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act (the Codes), supports the pillars of black enterprise by providing financial and non-financial solutions across a range of sectors to black empowered businesses, for start-up, expansion and equity transformation purposes.

Strategic Projects Fund

As a leader in venture capital finance which allows entrepreneurs to participate in projects that are at an early stage within sectors identified by the RSA government as key drivers to the economic growth of South Africa. The fund also provides project finance and private equity in these projects once they are regarded as bankable.

Funding Criteria

The NEF provides funds to black entrepreneurs and groups with the aim of facilitating access to finance in support of Broad-Based BEE in terms of government legislation. The investment activities of the NEF are guided by an investment policy that seeks to ensure that investments create real economic empowerment for black people without deviating from sound economic principles.

Each application for funding is assessed in terms of the following criteria:

• Commercial viability of the business case being presented
• The business must comply with all relevant laws and regulations
• There must be operational involvement at the managerial and board levels by black people
• Minimum percentage of black ownership or interest of 50.1% is a requirement
• The business must be able to repay NEF funding
• The business must create a reasonable number of jobs
• Geographic location of the business is also important with the focus on rural or economically depressed areas encouraged
• Meaningful black women participation is viewed more favourably
• Rural and Community Development Projects must have meaningful participation by communities
• Possibility of co-funding with private or public sector institutions is encouraged in larger projects.

Once your application has been received and found to meet the above conditions, it will then go through different stages for a detailed commercial assessment.