Business Retention & Expansion: growing and keeping what business you already have

This is a brief illustrated presentation of the LED Business Retention and Expansion approach drawing inspiration from real projects in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.  Generally, Local Economic Development is often associated with creating new enterprises or trying to attract investors to put capital into a locality. But what about existing businesses that have been providing jobs for years and are embedded in the community? Business Retention and Expansion as an approach to LED offers a systematic approach to creating jobs by retaining and growing existing business through a partnership – where business becomes better interconnected and networked to tackle common problems. The municipality is a partner to this method and can act as facilitator. This document is part of the of the P3 series LED Demystified: A local Development Toolkit for South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.