South Africa's factory owners are a dying breed, the Mail & Guardian reports. Hopes for South African reindustrialisation may be dashed by the grim results of the first Small and Medium Enterprise Growth Index, a longitudinal study following 500 small businesses with between 10 and 50 workers.
Chris Darroll, chief executive of the Small Business Project, a Johannesburg-based think-tank and research outfit that conducts the growth index, said that the research confirms that entrepreneurs are not, as the popular myth wants it, "bright young things", who throw caution to the wind and start businesses as soon as they leave the school gates.
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