Mpho Khorombi’s wife was having their second child. As he raced her several hundred kilometres to the nearest hospital in Limpopo, he was struck by how privileged he was compared with others where he lived. He committed then and there that he would make a difference.
At the end of March he was one of the stars at the launch of our new private placements market, raising the funds he will need to develop a state-of-the-art hospital, complete with a neonatal and maternity wing, in Musina on the border between SA and Zimbabwe.
It’s just one of the ways that the JSE is continuing to innovate as we make ourselves future-fit for our 135th year of operations.
It’s a history that literally began in a tent in the middle of the mining camp that would become Johannesburg, the fabled African Eldorado, in 1887, and then effectively went virtual, operating remotely, during SA’s Covid lockdown in March 2020.
The JSE has always been about capital formation, whether it was enabling the deep level mining of the Witwatersrand, funding the development of the most industrialised country in Africa or unlocking the potential of local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to become major multinationals, employing thousands of people worldwide in the process.
Recently there has been criticism about the shrinkage of companies on our boards, as firms delist.
We have taken a broader approach to fundamentally support efficient and relevant capital formation as the exchange's primary focus. There are a myriad of reasons for delisting; some totally beyond the control of the bourse.
The listings numbers have not been replaced as quickly, because many newer companies, especially smaller start-ups, may not have the capacity to deal with the requirements for listing and the regular reporting thereafter that is expected.
We are actively working on cutting red tape, creating an enabling environment for companies and building our feeder market.
The JSE Private Placement Platform (JPP), which we launched after obtaining its regulatory licence in December 2021, is a collaboration with UK fintech Globacap.
The platform connects private issuers directly to investors, enabling private capital formation in a more transparent, efficient and accessible manner. Through technology, it allows for vital privately funded infrastructure projects to get off the ground with potentially game-changing consequences for our country. In the past three months, it has attracted more than R5bn in potential investments.
But it’s so much more than just technology — it’s about changing the way we work and recommitting ourselves to the market and to the broader country we serve to build back better.
Part of that involves enabling the provision of infrastructure, whether through private-public partnerships or private initiatives, and to help create jobs in a society that is buckling under the dead weight of joblessness.
SMEs are vital in this regard. The contribution they make is directly exponential to their growth; whether through the numbers they employ or the taxes they pay.
We are actively working on cutting red tape, creating an enabling environment for companies and building our feeder market
Building the economy creates jobs, prosperity and hope. It’s for this reason that we started two supporting programmes, an Incubator of Incubators, aimed at smaller start-ups, and the JSE Enterprise Acceleration Programme, aimed at more established scale-up companies.
We wanted to nurture and inspire SMEs to become large enterprises quickly by putting them in touch with proven South African business mentors and helping them access capital, either through the JPP or listing on the main board.
The accelerator pilot cohort of hand-picked companies, all of which have to be South African owned and in business for two years or more, helped us fine tune the programme for when we began with our official first cohort last August.
This is a highly interactive nine-month programme that blends one-on-one mentoring with master classes and webinars, all focused on scaling, capital, funding requirements and operations.
Each of the selected companies is set individual milestones on their road to ultimately raising capital as unlisted entities through JPP or AltX, our board that lists small to medium companies, as the programme fast-tracks their growth.
We have been working with business luminaries and mentors such as Nkateko Khoza (director of Dzana Investments), Isaac Shongwe (Letsema chair and founder) and Alison Collier (CEO of Endeavor), and strategic partners Endeavor, Business Partners and SiModisa.
Over the past year, the 15 companies that were part of Accelerator raised R800m in capital, grew revenue by 50% on average, increased employment in their cohort by 40% to 2,500 staff and contributed R2bn in revenue to the South African economy.
We need people who can make things happen; whether it’s purifying water or creating office space, educating our children, making sense of data or helping us urgently access loans when we need them.
But the biggest difference these companies can make is by scaling up into large enterprises, creating more sustainable job opportunities and making a dent in the truly disheartening unemployment rate.
The people of our country need opportunities and hope that one day they can achieve that better life for all and break the chains of intergenerational poverty. This can be achieved through accessing jobs, either directly in the companies that are growing or indirectly by being able to provide services to them.
The JSE funded the development of the modern SA. The JSE was there at the dawn of democracy, assisting in the transformation of the economy.
Now, in a world shaped by the twin forces of the fourth industrial revolution and the greatest public health crisis in living memory, we are preparing to fund the future.
We are doing this by changing who we are, what we do and — most importantly — how we do it. We are ensuring that we are future-fit in a world that is rapidly changing.
Part of that might mean bringing people together to create specialised medical infrastructure to make sure newborn babies have a decent chance of making it through birth to their first year. Just think what else we can do together.
• Fourie is group CEO of the JSE
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.