Top Empowerment Conference award winners for 2022

Image: Top Empowerment on Twitter

This year’s theme, "Africa Driving a Transformed Economy”, paid homage to those who are committed to empowering Black-owned businesses and concluded with an awards ceremony announcing 12 South African businesses that have proven to be transformative.

"The success of the economy rests on South Africa's ability to re-shape and rebuild the economy. It's important for government, public and private sectors to come together so that we can change the structural outlook of our country," says Ralph Fletcher, CEO of Topco Media.

The 2022 Top Empowerment winners:

These companies proved they are making tremendous efforts in transforming South Africa's evolving workforce and are encouraging all those that live South Africa to take the necessary steps to help transform the economy, not just for now, but for future generations to come.

Encouraging positive change

Clem Sumter, futurologist and scenario planner, comments, “The economy is in an extremely dilapidated state at the moment, and leaders of the biggest economies in the world need to come together to ask, 'what are we going to do to further develop greater equality?'”

Attendees consisted of corporates, academia, government and members of the private and public sector. In a bid to push the transformation agenda, panel discussions over the two-day summit looked for inspiration and reflected on the transformation journey thus far, providing expert solutions to the recurring issues in the context of transformation and empowerment.

Highlights from the summit include discussions around the new BBBEE codes and the implications these changes will have on local businesses; the key role entrepreneurs play in Africa’s economic growth; the township economy; exploring ESD programmes applicable to South Africa; and the impacts of the digital revolution on skills development and transformation.

Some key takeouts on actionable insights from top empowered organisations included:

• The need to continuously adapt and enhance skills to remain in economic competitiveness.
  
• A collaborative approach between government, private sector, public sector and SMMEs is needed.
  
• Ensuring that connectivity is no longer a challenge, but a basic service to all.
  
• Only by creating an enabling environment can we really hope to create an economy that benefits all.
  
• If there’s no transformative ownership, nothing is going to change, and the structure of our economy will remain the same and continue to increase inequality.

Watch the full awards ceremony here, or the highlights from the 2022 Top Empowerment Conference & Awards here.

Click here to view all the finalists.