A suggestion on how to spend R500 million in the kasi

Posted by Admin (JS) on 17 September 2026, 13:20 SAST

BY JANICE SCHECKTER, FOUNDER AND CEO, KASIKONNECT

Giving a spaza shop a cash grant to restock is an exercise in futility. It doesn't build the township economy; it simply subsidizes its exit. That money stays in the Kasi for all of two hours before leaking straight back to external FMCG corporate giants.
If we want a real return on this R500 million investment, we must dig past the physical symptoms and fix the foundational crises: the asymmetry of buying power, ecosystem isolation, and a total data deficit.

Here is how the fund management should pivot from direct stock payouts to building Economic Sovereignty;

From Cash Grants to Credit Guarantees: Instead of handing over cash, use the capital to back digital credit facilities with local buying groups. This allows traders to secure inventory on favourable terms while safely building a formal credit history.
Fund Digital Buying Collectives: Aggregate the buying power of hundreds of independent traders through a shared procurement platform. Let them negotiate corporate-level bulk discounts directly with manufacturers, eliminating their price disadvantage.
Deploy Toolkits for Data Dignity: Tie funding to basic digital Point-of-Sale (POS) and inventory tools. By helping traders turn invisible cash transactions into verifiable financial data, we make them permanently bankable.

Stop trying to patch the individual trader while ignoring the broken plumbing. Let’s use this fund to fix the value chain, plug the capital extraction, and keep the Rand circulating where it matters most.