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Media
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Yumnaa Firfirey
Co-founder Western Cape Economic Development Partnership (EDP)
Yumnaa Firfirey, founded the Economic Development Partnership (EDP) together with Andrew Boraine. The EDP is a cross-sector collaborative organisation, which was launched in April 2012. This organisation was established after more than a year of stakeholder consultation, analysis of the regional economy and the economic delivery system to understand the key inhibitors to stronger regional economic performance.
The purpose of the organisation is to facilitate effective partnerships for inclusive, resilient economic growth in the Western Cape Province and the country as a whole. This comprises of partnerships for the following outcomes:
- Comprehensive economic and marketing intelligence
- Collective economic vision and strategy development
- Coordination of joint action and delivery
- Evaluation of effective contribution towards systemic economic impact
And the following types of partnerships:
- Partnerships to nurture sustainable livelihoods and enhance employability
- Partnerships to drive high impact entrepreneurship
- Partnerships to facilitate and guide investment
- Partnerships to support innovation
Yumnaa continues to play a key role in the strategic management of this organisation.
Social Entrepreneur
Determined to not just be an advocate for inclusive business and responsible corporate citizenship, Yumnaa has embarked on a journey to explore ethical business as a social entrepreneur herself. Watch this space!
Founder, Towards Uhuru
After leaving Provincial Government, Yumnaa established Towards Uhuru, an economic development consultancy to explore optimal impactful interventions by various economic role players, whether government, business, civil society or academia. Refer to the rest of this website for a more comprehensive insight into the activities of this organisation.
Interim CEO at Provincial Development Council
The Western Cape Provincial Development Council (PDC), a provincial public entity, has a mandate to co-ordinate, facilitate and initiate consensus amongst stakeholders on provincial, regional and local development planning, policy objectives and development strategies. The four social partners or constituencies in the Western Cape are government, business, labour and civil society. This arrangement provides a broad guideline to address the economic and social challenges which impede the socio-economic development of the Western Cape.
Director, Tourism Growth at Department of Economic Development and Tourism
As head of the Directorate: Tourism Growth, Yumnaa was responsible for the growth of the tourism industry in the Western Cape through effective planning and partnerships; the competitiveness of the destination; infrastructure, product and route development; countering seasonality; human resource development for the industry; strategic marketing and effective leveraging of major events such as the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Deputy Director, Tourism Entrepreneurship at Department Economic Development and Tourism
Under Yumnaa’s leadership, a Tourism Business Forum (TBF) was formed amongst strategic partners in the Western Cape tourism industry.
Through the partnership of the TBF, private sector, government and agencies set up by government worked together, with shared programmes and resources to achieve a common vision. Collectively, a tiered support strategy was developed that entailed a comprehensive support system for entrepreneurs at varying tiers of business sophistication to enable them to progress from one tier to the next and to support them in their growth and success. This has been achieved through capacity building, mentorship, financial support and market access programmes and an extensive network of tourism entrepreneurship support agents (THDs). While the mandate of this sub-directorate was limited to the Western Cape, other South Africa provinces as well as the South African National Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and that of Namibia explored ways of replicating the model.
Project Manager at IMSA Environmental Consultancy, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
While IMSA covered a variety of environmental consultancy fields, Yumnaa concentrated on building environmental awareness amongst the youth and on developing and commercialising saline agricultural technologies, to maximize the use of the earth’s abundant salt-water resources and simultaneously protect the scarce freshwater resources.
Consultant at International Student Travel Confederation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The International Student Travel Confederation (ISTC) is a not-for-profit organization, with members in 90 countries who collectively negotiate with airlines, governments and providers of goods and services for the benefit of the world-wide student community. Yumnaa led the following projects:
- Member Organisations’ Performance Assessment Model
- World Heritage Sites Awareness amongst Student Travellers
- International Responsible Travel Campaign
- The International Student Research Survey
- Managing Trustee at Camp iAfrika, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Camp iAfrika was a unique experience bringing young people from all parts of the world together to South Africa where they interact with each other in sport, drama, music, art & crafts, and many other activities. Yumnaa built the organisation from one office in South Africa, undertaking only local projects, to a fully operational international organisation over a period of 18 months, with international exposure and representatives in various countries.
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2. What is the best function and structure of a Western Cape Economic Development Agency in order to achieve higher economic growth.
Synopsis:
The Western Cape economy has not been operating at full throttle over the past seventeen years since 1994 and before then. The Provincial Government has embarked on a number of studies with recommended interventions to accelerate the tempo of the economy in order to hike the regional GDP and the propensity to create jobs. However, not all these studies were adopted by Provincial Cabinet, let alone were the proposed interventions implemented. In 2010, an announcement was made that an Economic Development Agency (EDA) for the province would be set up, which would amalgamate all the existing economic agencies in order to consolidate and bolster provincial government’s effort with regard to an underwhelming economy. Will a mega-agency be the silver bullet? The team appointed to investigate the ideal roles and functions of the proposed agency is proposing an alternative to the mega-agency. Andrew Boraine (Cape Town Partnership), Yumnaa Firfirey (Towards Uhuru) and Greg Clark (international thought leader on economic strategy) recommend recommend that the new EDA does not consolidate all the existing agencies, but rather plays a better role of co-ordinating existing successful agencies and building the depth of leadership and literacy in the economy to effect real change.
For more information on this study, email yfirfirey@towardsuhuru.co.za
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1. Assessing the Efficacy of a major South African retailer’s Supplier Development Initiative.
Synopsis:
While the major South African retailers are thriving, they operate in a country with severe income disparities, reflected in a Gini-coefficient of 0.679 (Presidency, 2009). An additional economic onslaught has been the recent, destructive global economic crisis, further slowing economic growth and inducing massive job losses. One of the main mechanisms earmarked to create jobs (and spike economic growth) is the development of small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs). SMMEs have been identified as engine rooms of job creation, since the propensity of small businesses to grow and hire more staff is proportionally greater than that of large companies. This retailer’s response to this need from the South African society has been their Small Business Initiative (SBI) which aims to increase the number of small, successful, emerging suppliers to PnP in the hope of both diversifying their product offering as well as complying meaningfully and strategically with the BEE Scorecard. The SBI also offers a way of responding to a small, but growing consumer market segment, gaining a foothold globally: socially responsible consumers (Nelson & Paek, 2009). These customers challenge business to be more responsive to the needs of the society in which it finds itself and in which it currently thrives. PnP’s ethos – ‘doing good is good business’ – underpins this response on the level of good corporate citizenship, BEE compliance, product diversification as well as catering to new promising markets. But is it effective?
For more information on this study, email yfirfirey@towardsuhuru.co.za
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