Are the Development Finance Institutions doing enough to combat high unemployment rate, slow economic growth, high economic inequality, and economic exclusion?

Taking into consideration the SONA speech by President Cyril Ramaphosa on the 12th February 2026 is obvious that the most imminent paramount obstacle South Africa is facing is pertaining to the economy. Ever since Cyril Ramaphosa assumed the presidency, South African economy faced colossal predicaments that hindered the transformation agenda, and by the look of things, it seems like they are here to stay.

President Ramaphosa held multiple public participation events from provincial Imbizos, Joburg summits, investments summits, and the big budget for the National Dialogue series of events.

To date, there are no valid tangible outcomes that can be attributed to those events in terms of addressing economic challenges faced by South Africa.

The question is, though, why Development Finance Institutions are not coming to the party by advancing the president‘s agenda through robust, aggressive investments in the SME sector and strategic pockets of the economy, because now we hear of things that are unheard of conducted by these development finance institutions.

For example, the story of Zithande Mbala with Industrial Development Corporation; Zithande Mbala, a talented, innovative black entrepreneur who developed a smart toilet paper concept was repeatedly denied financial assistance by IDC for 9 years from 2009 to 2018.

He then went to court for assistance and was ultimately rewarded with seed funding from the IDC however he later faced challenges from the IDC as soon as his product was market ready and his funding was unlawfully reversed.

To date is still experiencing hostile reception from the IDC.

Mthunzi Mdwaba black entrepreneur with vast experience in labour development, skills and training had its five billion rand contract, which had the potential to create over one hundred thousand job opportunities cancelled by the UIF, all because of his alleged activities of extortion against most senior political officials.

Ralebala Matome Mampuele black real estate entrepreneur with vast experience in affordable housing space got its funding from the Public Investment Corporation, reversed after successfully acquiring shares in the internet fibre business called Metrofibre. Ralebale Mampuele alleged that senior officials from the Public Investment Corporation wanted to solicit bribes from after complete transaction of his BEE transaction.

Apparently senior officials from Public Investment Corporation wanted to solicit about R3 million because of their involvement in the success of the application of Mr. Ralebala Mampuele. For some reason, PIC annexed the shares they funded on behalf of Mr. Mampuele through their developmental investment fund.

Currently, there are criminal cases pending on this matter.

In the past few days, we saw PIC issuing a media statement that seeks to interfere with the freedom of speech of Mr Mampuele rather than inviting him to the table sitting to resolve the matter hand. What is shocking is that there are no directives from the most senior officials. This matter is like business as usual.

All these incidents seek to undermine the transformation agenda set out in the Constitution of our country. Public Investment Corporation, which happens to be the biggest investor in the JSE ought to be intentional in the transformation of the private investment place.

By Now the PIC should be producing at least thousand US dollar millionaires from historically disadvantaged backgrounds annually, but that is not the case because they are literally fighting the very same beneficiaries they are supposed to empower.

Having said is clear that development finance institutions are not intentional about transformation, hence the president of the country is not able to produce results that seek to talk to the transformation agenda.

My take is that while the president is able to preside over the state security agency and enforce directives from within the same powers must be borrowed to his relevant political officials to these development finance institutions.

With the newly established Transformation Fund by minister Parks Tau is quite likely that the implementing agent of that fund will be one of the finance development institutions and their fragmented attitude towards the beneficiaries to date is cancerous, hence all the promises made by the sitting president are unfruitful to date because all the institutions that are supposed to be the forerunners in the transformation agenda are simply not coming on board.

Mr Mpilo Mvana is an independent analyst