Social entrepreneurship as a driver of local economic development in South Africa: Pathways to sustainable poverty alleviation and community empowerment

The aim of this paper was to analyse social entrepreneurs as the proponents towards achieving LED and ensuring the reduction of poverty and community empowerment. The emergence of social entrepreneurship in South Africa could improve LED, addressing imperative conundrums such as poverty, unemployment and inequality. The argument of this paper is that social entrepreneurs through their unique business models may play a critical role in ensuring a comprehensive LED, which could be sustainable to alleviate poverty and ensure community empowerment. The significance of social entrepreneurship cannot be circumvented in a country characterized by socio-economic ills, wherein people’s living standards continue to deteriorate. Thus, the capacity of both government and private sector remains questionable because of the perpetual challenges that ordinary people endure on the ground. Social entrepreneurs may help to rejuvenate underserved communities, especially in rural and township regions. The paper emphasized on how social enterprises foster inclusive development by generating employment, improving access to education, healthcare and financial services and uplifting historically marginalized groups like women and youth. This is a conceptual paper that adopted a literature-based methodology to fulfil its aim. It relied on secondary data sources to critique social entrepreneurship as a proponent for LED. The paper revealed that social entrepreneurs continue to play a significant role in improving the lives of the destitute both in rural and township areas. This paper underscored the need to have a proliferation of social entrepreneurs to resuscitate local economic hubs in South African rural and township areas. It concludes that for a comprehensive LED to take place, social entrepreneurs should be the paragons of LED.