Meat, markets and money: Empowering SA entrepreneurs for a food-secure future

With this in mind, the Association of Meat Importers and Exporters (AMIE) launched the AMIE Academy in 2023. The Academy’s 12-month development programme empowers entrepreneurs with business and industry skills. It also offers business coaching to help MSMEs become investment-ready. The Academy is growing from strength to strength. In 2023, we started with five MSMEs in our pilot group. At the end of 2024, we onboarded our second cohort of 15 MSMEs and have just onboarded our third cohort of 22 MSMEs at the end of September.

Not every entrepreneur qualifies. The Academy employs a rigorous selection process to ensure only the most suitable candidates qualify and maximise the completion success rate of all our candidates. This is a critical step – setting entrepreneurs up for failure is counterproductive, and this is an especially tough and competitive industry to break into.

Entrepreneurial empowerment in South Africa: why it matters

Entrepreneurial empowerment – giving people the skills, resources, networks, and policies to start, sustain, and grow businesses – is central to addressing these challenges. When more individuals and communities become entrepreneurs (especially small-scale, historically disadvantaged ones), the benefits are multiple:

• Poverty reduction and job creation: SMEs and agricultural enterprises are often more labour-intensive, capable of absorbing unemployed or underemployed labour, especially in rural areas.

• Inclusive economic participation: Empowerment helps counter deep inequalities (racial, geographic, gender). When women, youth, and smallholders have access to markets, finance, training, and decision-making, wealth and opportunity spread more broadly.

• Resilience and diversity: A diversity of producers and supply chain actors reduces risk (from climate, disease, and market shocks) compared with overcentralised, single-provider systems.

• Innovation and competitiveness: Empowered entrepreneurs tend to innovate – both in production, logistics, value addition, and market strategy – which can make industries more efficient, export-oriented, and globally competitive.

Given all this, entrepreneurial empowerment is not just a social good but an economic strategy for inclusive, sustained growth. However, being a successful entrepreneur in South Africa is fraught with challenges – from funding and infrastructure to compliance and legislation.

The meat import and export industry in South Africa: Landscape and challenges

• South Africa has traditionally both exported and imported meat products (although we import more than what we export), depending on species, cuts, quality, demand, standards, and trade agreements.

• There are rigorous regulatory, sanitary, biosecurity, traceability, cold chain, and logistical requirements, especially for export markets. Missing or weak infrastructure or skills in any link of the chain can prevent producers or traders from accessing higher-value markets.

• Small and emerging meat importers/exporters, or meat producers who want to engage in export value chains, often find themselves constrained by lack of funding, knowledge of export standards (e.g. certifications, compliance), lack of scale, limited access to reliable transport, cold storage, veterinary services, etc.

The government has recognised many of these challenges. For example, in speeches and strategic plans, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has identified structural transformation and inclusion, regulatory efficiency, and trade enablement among the pillars needed to strengthen red meat/dairy export competitiveness and food security. (Government of South Africa)

Upskilling in the meat import/export industry: what it means and how it helps

'Upskilling' in this context refers to deliberate interventions to improve the capabilities of stakeholders in the meat import-export value chains. That includes technical, business, administrative, regulatory, logistical, and market skills. Some types of upskilling include:

• Training in export quality standards: biosecurity, animal health, hygiene, traceability, cold chain, sanitary and phytosanitary measures.

• Business and financial skills: cost and margin management, scaling operations, negotiation, access to finance, business planning.

• Regulatory and trade knowledge: understanding import/export regulations, certifications, negotiation of market access, compliance with foreign market expectations.

• Logistical and supply chain skills: cold storage, packaging, transport optimisation, handling perishables, and managing risk of spoilage or rejection.

• Technology adoption includes digital recordkeeping, traceability systems, perhaps even blockchain, monitoring systems, and remote veterinary diagnostics.

The AMIE Academy provides mentorship, training, market access support, and is part of the transformation and value chain strengthening agenda. Through the activities of the Academy, innovations such as remote online facilitation and easy access to curriculum and classes make it possible for MSMEs from all over the country to take part. The AMIE Academy Fund was also launched this year to offer an innovative funding mechanism for ongoing support of our MSME’s that complete their training, while providing industry stakeholders with governance and compliance services.

How this contributes to inclusive wealth, demand-led value chains, and food security

Putting entrepreneurial empowerment and upskilling into action in the meat import/export sector helps create multiple beneficial feedback loops. Here are some of the ways:

1. Inclusive wealth generation

By enabling small, black-owned, youth-owned, women-owned enterprises to enter or move up the value chain, a greater share of wealth and profit flows to historically marginalised people. This helps reduce inequality, supports rural development, raises incomes, and can improve livelihoods in places that have long been under-served. Moreover, jobs are created not only on farms but in processing, logistics, cold chain, export documentation, etc.

2. Demand-led value chains

As upskilled entrepreneurs become better able to meet quality, regulatory, and market demands (from domestic retailers, export markets, etc.), value chains become more responsive to consumer and market requirements – in terms of safety, quality, consistency. This pull from demand (local and international) encourages upstream actors (farmers, producers) to improve inputs, practices, breeds, handling, etc., raising overall standards and efficiency. Stronger demand-led value chains tend to reduce waste, improve reliability, and supply higher-value products (premium cuts, processed meats), reducing the risk of dumping.

3. Future food security

Meat (red meat and poultry) is a critical source of nutrition. Ensuring reliable supply, quality, safety, and affordability is part of ensuring food security. Upskilling helps mitigate risks to supply: better disease control, better traceability, improved veterinary services, better feed, etc. This helps prevent losses, spoilage, and disease outbreaks. Also, by diversifying supply sources (including smallholders and emerging producers), the system becomes more resilient to shocks – drought, supply chain disruptions, rising feed/transport costs, import-license or policy changes.

Constraints, trade-offs and what’s needed

Of course, upskilling and empowerment alone aren’t a remedy. Some of the constraints and trade-offs include:

• Costs: Training, infrastructure (cold storage, transport, veterinary services), certification, and compliance are expensive. Many small actors struggle to finance these.

• Regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles: Delays in getting export certifications, inconsistent enforcement, lack of clarity can hamper entrepreneurs.

• Infrastructure gaps: Poor roads, unreliable electricity (especially in rural areas), weak cold chain, lack of transport options.

• Scale and consistency: Export markets require large volumes, consistency, reliability in quality. Small producers might find it difficult to aggregate or maintain standards constantly.

• Market access and trade policy: Non-tariff barriers, trade restrictions, volatile currency, and other external risks can make export business risky.

To overcome these, certain enabling conditions are required:

• Public and private investment in relevant infrastructure (cold chain, veterinary services, transport).

• Policy and regulatory reforms to streamline export procedures, improve biosecurity, traceability, and harmonise standards.

• Access to finance, perhaps via grants, subsidised loans, or ESD (enterprise and supplier development) funds.

• Mentorship, networks, and business support services: pairing emerging exporters with established players, facilitating market linkages, technical assistance.

• Emphasis on inclusive policies: targeting women, youth, and smallholder farmers explicitly in programmes.

Case study: AMIE Academy

It may be helpful to look at how some of this is already working:

• The AMIE Academy supports entrepreneurs in meat import and export via a 12-month development programme. It provides mentorship, training, and industry exposure. This is done mostly on-line with self-paced modules as well as group engagements, personal coaching and industry immersion sessions.

• The AMIE Academy Fund supports ESD (enterprise and supplier development) investment in meat, poultry, and related import/export value chain entrepreneurs. This helps with funding, one crucial hurdle.

• Through the Academy, emerging entrepreneurs connect with other entrepreneurs, understand the value chain they want to operate in, understand regulatory, logistical, and quality challenges, etc. This kind of structured, intentional upskilling can help reduce failure rates and promote sustained, inclusive participation.

• The Academy, in partnership with Tushiyah Xchange, the roll-out and entrepreneurial development specialists, also offers an online portal for the establishment of a community of practice called the Xchange Village.

• Lastly, all investment-ready entrepreneurs are featured on the Back-a-business page of Tushiyah Xchange with very detailed information about investment and funding needs.

Conclusion

Entrepreneurial empowerment – especially when coupled with upskilling – is a powerful lever for South Africa to build wealth more inclusively, create demand-led value chains in the meat import-export sectors, and enhance food security. The meat industry offers strong opportunities for value addition, export earnings, job creation, and improving nutrition.

For this potential to be realised broadly, though, requires coordinated effort: smart policy, investment in infrastructure, targeted financial support, and programs like the AMIE Academy, that give people the tools they need.

However, the proof is always in the pudding (or, in this case, the protein). Initiatives like the Academy are funded by a statutory levy and allow for a limited number of candidates per cohort. Ongoing support is also limited at the moment, and, as studies show, the longer an MSME has access to support, the more likely they are to survive and thrive. The vision of the Academy is to become a centre of excellence for development in the industry. For this to happen, the existing momentum is encouraging, as it proves the need for development programmes like these.

The AMIE Academy invites industry stakeholders to partner with us to make our vision a reality.

Looking for a worthy cause to spend your enterprise supplier development, skills development, or enterprise development budget? The AMIE Academy puts its money where its mouth is. You don’t have to take our word for it; listen to an interview with Nobubelo Nzima, an entrepreneur currently participating in our Cohort II group and a lady of considerable grit and passion.

For more information contact az.oc.aseima@asirus