Stokvel Academy, a South African social enterprise focused on strengthening stokvels through financial education and governance training, has received funding from E Squared Investments to launch a new youth-led initiative.
Founded in 2017 by Busisiwe Skenjana, the academy works to transform stokvels into tools for generational wealth and financial inclusion.
The investment will fund the Stokvel Agent Accelerator, an 18-month pilot that will train unemployed youth to help digitise stokvel operations and deliver financial literacy programmes in local communities.
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The pilot will begin in Soweto and the Vaal region with 25 youth agents, who will onboard stokvels onto digital platforms, improve record-keeping and run financial education workshops.
The programme aims to digitise more than 3,400 stokvels, benefiting an estimated 28,000 members, while extending financial education to another 800 community members. The initiative is designed to improve governance, strengthen group sustainability and create income opportunities for young people.
Skenjana said the funding will help demonstrate how stokvels can be professionalised and modernised to support long-term economic resilience. E Squared's chief investment officer, Pyi Maung, said the initiative reflects the organisation's commitment to inclusive growth and the role of community networks in expanding economic participation.
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Key Takeaways
Stokvels remain one of South Africa's most important informal financial systems, supporting savings, insurance and community investment for millions of households. Yet many groups still rely on manual processes, making them vulnerable to governance weaknesses and limited access to formal financial services. Stokvel Academy's new programme targets both sides of this challenge: digitising operations and equipping communities with financial skills. The inclusion of unemployed youth as agents links financial inclusion with job creation, two of the country's most urgent priorities. By training young people to support and modernise existing community structures, the initiative builds on trusted networks rather than replacing them. The scale of the pilot--thousands of stokvels and tens of thousands of members--offers an opportunity to test whether grassroots digitisation can be rolled out sustainably. If successful, the model could expand nationally, providing a blueprint for combining technology, community finance and youth empowerment to strengthen South Africa's informal economy.
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