By Amy Musgrave
The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) says SMMEs will bear the brunt of climate change and should form part of “sustainable industrialisation” in South Africa. This is to ensure that SMMEs are included in the supply and value chains of food systems and green energy businesses. This was the message of the Industrial Development Corporation’s new Sustainable Industrial Development Pathways plan, launched at the COP28 climate change meeting in the United Arab Emirates.
IDC chief operations officer Joanne Bate said the IDC favoured “small, diversified value chains that support global markets.”. She said, for example, that local South African ports could become green hubs if the critical minerals needed to shift to renewable energy could be beneficiated by different companies and turned into green products in South Africa before being sold overseas, instead of just being extracted by a mining giant and shipped out. “We can localise and green value chains,” Bate said.
The IDC will fund “downstream industries” in the manufacturing sector because it is more likely that smaller firms will be able to participate in selling products and services to these industries. The plan also places importance on funding food systems and agriculture. “Addressing spatial disparities in relation to poor provinces, townships, and rural areas is embedded in the IDC’s decision-making,” reads the IDC plan. Small businesses must be brought into the private household green energy system boom.
The IDC said it would fund local production of essential components of solar and other green energy systems and “assist local manufacturers to be sustainably competitive.”. Presenting the plan at COP28, Pamela Mondliwa, the IDC’s industry development planner, said South Africa’s economy needed to be diversified away from mining and minerals. The IDC would be investing in the industrial hemp industry because hemp (Cannabis sativa) absorbed large quantities of carbon and could also be used to restore land damaged by mining. “Hemp has multiple industrial applications with whole plant (flower, seeds, and stalks) usage depending on defined and different products and demand pathways that the IDC is working towards industrialising,” said Mondliwa.
There could be opportunities for rural SMMEs to turn hemp into biofuel and paint. “Developing countries, SA included, have a crisis of rural poverty. Hemp cultivation and value-added processing for end-user demand can significantly address employment creation and sustainable rural livelihoods,” Mondliwa said. The IDC also wants to invest in hemp-based fiberglass, paper, packaging, oil, cloth, and hemp-based protein for human and animal foods. “Supporting the industrialisation of hemp also facilitates the inclusion of rural communities that have established capabilities in the cultivation of cannabis, including with respect to indigenous knowledge practices,” Mondliwa added.
