The impact of the Development Bank of Southern Africa's investments on performance of renewable energy SMEs

Abstract

This study assesses the impact of Development Bank of South African (DBSA) investment on performance of renewable energy solar photovoltaic (PV) SMEs. While The DBSA is one of the leading African Development Financial Institutions (DFI) wholly owned by the government of South Africa, established in 1983 to promote economic development, growth, and regional integration through infrastructure finance to improve the quality of people’s lives Quantitative research was applied, the descriptive statistics used Analysis of variance (ANOVA) to analyse the empirical findings. The study indicates that funding had a minimal impact on employment, significant impact on solar photovoltaic installation and after-sales support skills development, a significant impact on expansion in the value chain into local warehousing for material storage and information and communication technology cluster development, and a minimal impact on revenue and market share growth. This study proposes a solution through the adoption of Porter’s value chain framework to enable development and growth across the end-to-end business chain in order to realise job creation, critical skills development for solar PV solution, and revenue and market growth. Furthermore, the study recommends possible solutions for long-term air pollution (carbon emission), and landfill pollution from the solar PV renewable energy