The Availability of Infrastructure in Townships: Is there Hope for Township Businesses?

Michael C. Cant
Additional contact information
Michael C. Cant: Department of Marketing and Retail Management, University of South Africa, South Africa

International Review of Management and Marketing, 2017, vol. 7, issue 4, 108-115

Abstract: Townships are part and parcel of the business landscape in South Africa although it was started during the apartheid era in South Africa. The impact of the apartheid era is still evident in the townships and is a testimony of abandonment, poor investment, overpopulation and isolation from urban areas and a serious lack of infrastructure and necessary resources in these areas (Thulo, 2015). A significant amount (60%) of the unemployed comes from townships and informal settlements (Thulo, 2015). It is evident that townships are complex and integrated at the same time with poor and middle class communities living side by side. Government has been attempting to kick start the economy and in the process to increase employment through small businesses and the generation of jobs in townships. This process is however hampered by a range of factors including a lack of infrastructure. The research highlighted the serious shortcomings in infrastructures throughout South Africa, and a need for advisory centres were indicated as being the most dire need in these areas to assist small business.

Keywords: infrastructure; SMEs; small businesses; township businesses; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M00 M10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econjournals.com/index.php/irmm/article/download/4832/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.econjournals.com/index.php/irmm/article/view/4832/pdf (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eco:journ3:2017-04-15

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Management and Marketing is currently edited by Ilhan Ozturk

More articles in International Review of Management and Marketing from Econjournals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ilhan Ozturk ().