The Stokvel Sector: Opportunities and Challenges

Description

The Stokvel Sector: Opportunities and Challenges: Abstract

The Stokvel Sector: Opportunities and Challenges is a case study by Thabo Mosala and Stephanie Townsend.

By 2009, stokvels (community-based savings clubs) were playing a substantial role in the South African economy. A 2003 study entitled ‘Stokvels: Making Social Cents’, conducted by the University of Cape Town (UCT) Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing, found that black adults in South Africa invested approximately R12 billion a year in stokvels and similar organisations. Thus, as a group, stokvels presented an apparently attractive market for private sector organisations. Andrew Lukhele, founder president of the National Stokvels Association of South Africa (NASASA), and Santy Mokgoatsane, business development manager of the Stokvel Company believed there was a need for certain stokvels to organise themselves more formally so as to create wealth for themselves – either as formal financial institutions or as small businesses that had the potential to grow.

Teaching objectives

This document was written with the intention of generating learning about strategy in the informal financial sector.