South Africa’s social and solidarity economy

This research report analyses data collected between July–December 2019, during the Social and Solidarity Economy draft Green Paper consultation process. The research goal was to better understand the social and solidarity economy (SSE), recognizing that the country’s contextual diversity results in extraordinary diversity in the SSE. The research question around which the study was designed was: ‘What does the SSE look like in South Africa?’

The insights from these data allow for recommendations on how to support the SSE. The SSE is a large and important part of many developed and developing market economies and is regarded as an important mechanism to achieve inclusive economic growth that addresses South Africa’s inequality, unemployment and poverty. Getting the policy mix ‘right’ to enable the SSE will unlock benefits, such as more and better jobs, especially in communities that are excluded or marginalized from economic centres.

To this end, this report identified six research questions:

What characterizes SSE practitioners and their organizations?

How do social and solidarity economy organizations fit into the institutional framework?

What sectors do social and solidarity economy organizations operate in, and where do they fall short?

How do social and solidarity economy organizations access funding?

What is the skills profile of social and solidarity economy organizations?

What did respondents say about their struggles and potential solutions?

The Social and Solidarity Economy Policy team travelled to all nine provinces, targeting people working in the SSE in the country’s most poor and least poor districts. This report is based on the survey responses of n=506 people, with respondents working in districts that plot across the multi-dimensional poverty index of Fransman and Yu (2019).