Ndabeni urges small businesses to participate in National Dialogue

Small Business Development Minister Stella Ndabeni speaks at the Pakistan–South Africa Trade Summit 2025 in Sandton on August 12, 2025.

Small Business Development Minister Stella Ndabeni is encouraging cooperatives and small businesses to take part in the upcoming National Dialogue.

On Friday, organisations from across the country will gather at the National Convention in Pretoria for the first phase of the dialogue process.

This comes amid the withdrawal of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation and other legacy foundations of stalwarts from the National Dialogue, citing issues around funding.

Ndabeni is urging the sector to make valuable inputs on the envisaged national dialogue. She says the dialogue is an opportunity for the small business sector to shape the future of the country.

“Our entrepreneurs cannot afford not to participate in the National Dialogue. They bring their own experience, their thinking, expertise, and knowledge of how South Africa must look like in the future. We are given an opportunity to define the future that we envision, and that future cannot mean anything if the cooperatives and small businesses are excluded whilst we are talking about building an inclusive growth.”

Business communities

Ndabeni also says they will ensure that the small business communities’ inputs are taken forward.

She says, “We are calling upon all entrepreneurs and cooperatives and small medium enterprises, they must come together, they must make sure they make their inputs in those public engagements, but also as the sector we will be working with them and the team of the National Dialogue to have sectoral engagements in terms of shaping the policy arena that they will drive in the agenda of the national dialogue.”

South African National Association of Co-operatives (Sanaco) president Lawrence Bale has stressed that the dialogue should benefit all.

“In whatever process we do, our people come first. We need that to happen, that people globally come together, unite and speak in one voice in support of the people.”