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The year under review has seen the National Empowerment Fund (NEF), an agency of the dti, mandated to grow Black participation in South Africa’s economy, registering what we believe to be a demonstration of exceptional achievements in its three core areas of focus, Fund Management, Asset Management and Strategic Projects, with equally significant gains in its various support functions.
In retracing these steps and in paging through the diary of excellence which the NEF has continued to author, I am inspired by what the writer, Margaret Barber, says about memory: “To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.”
The operative theme for this period, Into the Hands of Many, is an apt narrative for a Development Finance Institution (DFI) whose ethos is to bridge the divide by providing financial and non-financial support for, as well as in engendering a culture of savings and investment among the Black multitudes who were previously excluded from the national economic life before the advent of freedom and democracy in 1994.
The Executive Committee and I are pleased to table this Annual Report 2009, which is a testament to how the NEF is fulfilling the mandate in bringing the rights of economic citizenship and empowerment into the hands of many.
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