Sefa, the Small Enterprise Finance Agency, no longer operates as a separate institution. On 1 October 2024, Sefa merged with the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda) and the Co-operative Banks Development Agency (CBDA) to form a single body: the Small Enterprise Development and Finance Agency (SEDFA). Applying to “Sefa” directly is no longer the process; SEDFA now runs both the funding and non-financial support Sefa used to provide.
Our guide to what replaced SEDA and Sefa covers the merged agency’s current offering, who qualifies, and the step most applicants skip when applying today. That is the guide to use if you are applying for funding now.
What Sefa Used to Offer
For context, since Sefa’s former structure still shows up in older references and documents, this is what it provided before the merger. Sefa operated as an agency arm of the Department of Small Business Development, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), supporting sectors including retail and tourism, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, small-scale mining, and green industry.
It offered two broad categories of support:
- Direct lending, from R50,000 up to R15 million, covering asset finance, bridging loans, revolving credit, and term loans, plus targeted programmes such as the Township and Rural Enterprise Programme and the Youth Challenge Fund.
- Wholesale lending, up to R150 million to intermediaries and R5 million to end-users, channelled through co-operative financial institutions, micro-finance intermediaries, and retail financial intermediaries.
Direct lending qualification generally required South African citizenship, CIPC registration, at least 95% South African staff, and (for direct lending specifically) at least 51% black ownership. Wholesale lending required a minimum two years in operation and CIPC compliance.
None of this changes what SEDFA offers today, since SEDFA absorbed Sefa’s mandate rather than replacing it with something different, but the application route has changed. For the current process, eligibility, and the free non-financial support most applicants overlook, see our guide to SEDFA funding. For the fuller policy and institutional context behind the merger, the Department of Small Business Development is the relevant authority.
