Black ownership of businesses in South Africa dropped 1.5 percentage point to below 30% last year, as Africa’s most industrialized nation struggles to economically empower a larger portion of its population. Black management control also dropped 5.4% percentage points to 51.6%, the B-BBEE Commission said in an annual report. The commission’s mandate is to supervise and encourage adherence to the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act passed almost two decades ago to address inequities stemming from apartheid in South Africa, where four in five people are Black. The downward trend has persisted despite the more than 500 B-BBEE ownership deals worth over 600 billion rand ($36.1 billion) reported to the commission since 2017 that aimed to facilitate the transfer of ownership to Black people. There is a need for less-expensive and unencumbered funding for Black people to make acquisitions that can give real value in the hands of Black people, especially from government funding institutions, the commission said. Click here to read full article