Black industrialist programme still firmly on DTI agenda, says October

Industrialisation remains a major part of the South African developmental agenda and an important vehicle towards achieving the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI’s) target of creating 100 black industrialists in the next five years, Trade and Industry director-general Lionel October has reiterated. Speaking at a Black Business Council (BBC) roundtable discussion on government’s Black Industrialists Development Programme, in Sandton, this week, October outlined that government saw the need for the development of 100 large black-owned and managed companies as a way of moving away from a “colonial history” of being an import-dependant economy.