How to Sponsor a Black Industrialist
There is growing pressure on South African businesses to think more strategically about how they deploy development capital, supplier support, and transformation spend. But beyond compliance, there is also a bigger question: what does meaningful industrial support actually look like in practice?
In this episode of Meet the Management, we speak to Nadia Rawjee of Uzenzele Holdings about the idea behind “Sponsor a Black Industrialist” — an initiative designed to help corporates use Enterprise and Supplier Development support more effectively, while helping black-owned industrial businesses unlock larger pools of strategic funding.
According to the campaign page, the model combines support from DTIC incentives, debt, and development finance, with the aim of building black-owned industrial capacity, expanding production, supporting localisation, and creating jobs.
Rather than framing support as a once-off intervention, this conversation looks at how catalytic funding can help manufacturers and industrial entrepreneurs become better positioned for long-term growth. It is a discussion about structure, leverage, and what it takes to move from good intentions to real industrial development.
About the guest
Nadia Rawjee is an executive director and co-founder of Uzenzele Holdings, the boutique advisory firm she founded with Zahra Rawjee in 2010. Uzenzele says it brings together business development, capital raising, and government funding expertise to help growing businesses access funding from a range of sources.
Public speaker profiles describe Nadia as a capital-raising and business advisory specialist with more than 15 years of leadership experience. One profile notes that she has helped raise more than R2.8 billion in capital for mid-tier companies, with particular strength in business analysis, funding strategy, and helping businesses become more bankable.
That makes her a particularly relevant voice for this conversation. The challenge is not only identifying businesses with potential, but understanding how to structure support in a way that makes further capital possible.
Why this conversation matters
The broader Black Industrialist support landscape is tied to South Africa’s industrial development agenda. Working Capital Solutions describes the Black Industrialist Scheme as a cost-sharing grant that can cover between 30% and 50% of qualifying project costs, up to R50 million, for black-owned manufacturers launching, expanding, or acquiring facilities.
Set against that backdrop, this episode matters because it reframes the question from “How do we spend support money?” to “How do we use strategic support to unlock productive industrial growth?” It suggests that ESD can be used not only to satisfy scorecard requirements, but to help develop more resilient suppliers, expand local production, and create better long-term commercial outcomes.
In this episode
This is not a generic conversation about funding. It is a sharper look at how business support can be structured with more intent — and why industrial growth often depends on combining the right partnerships, incentives, and financial architecture.
Watch the full episode to hear Nadia Rawjee unpack the thinking behind the initiative, the role of strategic funding support, and why sponsoring a black industrialist may be a more powerful lever for growth than it first appears.
About Uzenzele Holdings
Uzenzele Holdings positions itself as a specialist advisory business focused on helping growing companies and project owners access funding from local and international development finance institutions, non-traditional financiers, commercial banks, and private funders. The firm’s work sits at the intersection of strategy, capital raising, and funding readiness.
In the context of this episode, that matters because the “Sponsor a Black Industrialist” initiative is not presented as a standalone grant idea. It is positioned as a structured way to use ESD support alongside broader financing mechanisms to help beneficiaries unlock larger investment and expand their businesses more sustainably. The related Working Capital Solutions page states that the initiative was conceptualised with Uzenzele Holdings and aims to strengthen supply chains while unlocking critical strategic funding for beneficiaries.
