Entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Global South, including South Africa, need to be radically redesigned to ensure inclusion and shared prosperity, according to the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation (AGOF).
Charleen Duncan, Head of Public Affairs and Communications at AGOF, recently addressed global delegates on the flaws in current entrepreneurial systems that present barriers to success. She said prevailing global systems perpetuated exclusionary privilege and placed unfair expectations on startup entrepreneurs from marginalised backgrounds “to play by rules of systems that were never designed to include them”.
“This is exactly why we advocate for transforming entrepreneurial ecosystems in South Africa and across the Global South, to normalise equitable access to opportunity,” Duncan said, during her Spark Talk at the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Conference in Mexico.
Duncan highlighted that current systems “perpetuate exclusion of marginalised entrepreneurs by default. These systems are designed around access for the already connected networks, capital and inherited norms. In our current systems, success is conformity. Entrepreneurs are asked to adapt to dominant models to be seen as viable. Power in the form of resources, knowledge and decision making sit with a small group and it is rarely redistributed or co-owned.” She said change requires fundamental systemic redesign. “We need inclusion by design, to ‘bake’ diversity into how systems are built, not retrofitted. This means designing with, not just for, historically excluded groups.”
Duncan also emphasised the need to value different forms of entrepreneurship. “We also need to redefine value, by honouring the alternative forms of entrepreneurship that exist in the world, like community-based entrepreneurship, informal entrepreneurship and co-operatives. These systems are not less than, they are differently powerful.” She called for power to “shift from gatekeeping to partnership. We must invest in platforms that allow co-creation and community ownership.”
She underlined that entrepreneurship should be about more than profit. “We need to start seeing entrepreneurship as more than purely economic output. It is about agency. Thriving entrepreneurship drives job creation and community reinvestment changes lives meaningfully and tackles unemployment. We have to move our societies from being job seekers to becoming job creators.”
AGOF starts in high schools to develop entrepreneurial potential early. “The Foundation’s pipeline model begins at creating awareness in high school This is also why they have launched the Allan Gray Entrepreneurship Challenge in schools where the foundation invest in potential, not the polished finished product.
Duncan stressed the importance of holistic support: “Entrepreneurs not only need seed-capital, they also need emotional and psychological safety to take risks. They need peer networks, mentors and long-term support.” She added that layered development builds capacity: “Investment-readiness should not be an exclusive concept it should be an integrated outcome of education and youth development.”
Reflecting on systemic inequities, Duncan said: “The uncomfortable truth is this: our entrepreneurial landscape was built by a few, for a few. The norms, the networks, the language of success, these weren’t created with the vast majority of South Africans in mind. They were shaped to preserve power, not distribute it.”
“Inclusion has become a buzzword, but change doesn’t come from adding colour to the walls, it comes from rebuilding the foundation. Once we recognise that potential exists everywhere and that community matters as much as capital and that investment-readiness is taught not inherited, we need to recognise that if we do not redesign the foundation, we will just keep fixing the cracks.
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