Two legit to quit - GrowZA celebrates 2 years of growth

In June 2022, GrowZA celebrates 2 years as a formally registered South African Public Benefit organisation. Time has flown and our work has taken us across the continent and spawned projects we are incredibly proud to support.

Some milestones include:

- Establishing a powerhouse Board of Directors

- Expanding GrowZA operations to Kenya and Egypt

- Partnering with EPL champions Manchester City Football club

- Producing a bestseller children's illustrated book (20 000 copies sold) based on SDG 6

- Launching a scholarship fuelled online smartphone photography academy with OPPO

Craig Kensley and the GrowZA team are building out a unique social investment agency model which services clients across sectors.

The proposition to the market is simple - connecting development opportunities to resources.

Social investors have responded to this clarion call and engaged the GrowZA model by slipstreaming into the development channels identified and built by GZA across the continent.

While GrowZA has been active as a white-labelled offering in the development sector for over a decade, executive director Craig identified a pain point in the donor ecosystem during the Covid-19 pandemic. Too few players in the programme design and delivery space were listening - REALLY listening - to both communities and donors. Thankfully, he is a good listener :-)

Headquartered in the economic hub of the most unequal country on the planet requires a thoroughly pragmatic response - one where the strategy of social investors is synergistically leveraged to the benefit of communities.

Some context of the period during which GrowZA was constituted from the World Bank:

After the pandemic-induced contraction of 6.4% in 2020, South Africa’s economy started to recover in 2021, with GDP growth reaching 4.9%. Growth was supported by favorable global demand and commodity prices, as well as the rebound in domestic economic activities from the 2020 recession. However, the recovery has been job-less thus far with nearly 1.9 people less people employed at the end of 2021 compared with the quarter before the pandemic struck. The pandemic shock has broadly weighed on social outcomes, with poverty rates, based on the poverty line for upper-middle income countries, estimated to have risen to levels of more than a decade ago.

South Africa remains a dual economy with one of the highest, persistent inequality rates in the world, with a consumption expenditure Gini coefficient of 0.67 in 2018. High inequality is perpetuated by a legacy of exclusion and the nature of economic growth, which is not pro-poor and does not generate sufficient jobs. Inequality in wealth is even higher and intergenerational mobility is low meaning inequalities are passed down from generation to generation with little change over time.

We are thankful to make a small contribution to the recovery of our continent from the blunt force trauma of the pandemic and years of structured exclusion of communities from opportunity and growth.

Thank you to all our donors, partners and clients.

Join us as we #GrowZA