Traditional funding models also remain largely standardised, relying on uniform criteria that do not reflect the diversity of today’s SME landscape, the writer says.
Women and youth now drive a growing share of South Africa’s small and medium enterprise (SME) funding demand, making up 36.1% and 50.6% of applicants respectively according to a 2025 FinFind South Africa MSME Access to Finance Report.
Unfortunately, the report also indicates that targeted financing solutions for these two groupings declined during the same period. Between 2018 and 2025, female-targeted funding actually decreased by 33%, while youth-targeted finance dropped by 15.4%.
For many of these entrepreneurs, limited collateral remains a key obstacle when it comes to accessing mainstream business funding.
Younger business owners are still early in their financial journeys, and most will not yet have accumulated the assets or credit history typically required by lenders. Similarly, women in South Africa are statistically less likely to have access to property or other collateral that can be used to secure traditional funding.
