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South Africa's policy of black economic empowerment (BEE) is not simply a moral initiative to redress the wrongs of the past. It is a pragmatic growth strategy that aims to realise the country's full economic potential while helping to bring the black majority into the economic mainstream.

  • Realising the country's full potential
  • Towards broad-based growth
  • BEE objectives
  • BEE codes and scorecard
  • Equity Equivalent Investment Programme for multinationals


In the decades before South Africa achieved democracy in 1994, the apartheid government systematically excluded African, Indian and coloured people from meaningful participation in the country's economy.

The distortions in the economy eventually led to a crisis, started in the 1970s, when gross domestic product (GDP) growth fell to zero, and then hovered at about 3.4% in the 1980s. At a time when other developing economies with similar resources were growing, South Africa was stagnating.


Realising the country's full potential

"Our country requires an economy that can meet the needs of all our economic citizens – our people and their enterprises – in a sustainable manner," the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) says in its BEE strategy document.

"This will only be possible if our economy builds on the full potential of all persons and communities across the length and breadth of this country."

Despite the many economic gains made in the country since 1994, the racial divide between rich and poor remains. As the DTI points out, such inequalities can have a profound effect on political stability:

"Societies characterised by entrenched gender inequality or racially or ethnically defined wealth disparities are not likely to be socially and politically stable, particularly as economic growth can easily exacerbate these inequalities."

BEE objectives


Through its BEE policy, the government aims to achieve the following objectives:

  • Empower more black people to own and manage enterprises. Enterprises are regarded as black-owned if 26% of the enterprise is owned by black people, and black people have substantial management control of the business.
  • Achieve a substantial change in the racial composition of ownership and management structures and in the skilled occupations of existing and new enterprises.
  • Promote access to finance for black economic empowerment.
  • Empower rural and local communities by enabling their access to economic activities, land, infrastructure, ownership and skills.
  • Promote human resource development of black people through, for example, mentorships, learnerships and internships.
  • Increase the extent to which communities, workers, co-operatives and other collective enterprises own and manage existing and new enterprises, and increase their access to economic activities, infrastructure and skills.
  • Ensure that black-owned enterprises benefit from the government's preferential procurement policies.
  • Assist in the development of the operational and financial capacity of BEE enterprises, especially small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) and black-owned enterprises.
  • Increase the extent to which black women own and manage existing and new enterprises, and facilitate their access to economic activities, infrastructure and skills training.