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Multimillionaire investor Magda Wierzycka says South Africa is sitting on a vast, underused weapon for growth: pension savings that barely touch local startups.
The Sygnia co-founder believes a small, targeted shift in how retirement money is invested could unleash billions of rand for young founders, without putting pensions at risk.
In a recent radio interview, Wierzycka argued that South African pension funds are still too conservative and too focused on public markets and offshore assets. While that approach protects capital, she said, it does little to build the kind of high-growth companies that create jobs and new industries at home.
Her pitch is simple. If funds agreed to channel just a thin slice of their assets into early-stage and growth-stage businesses, the country could create a dedicated pool of capital big enough to change the startup landscape. Wierzycka pointed to international examples where pension funds have committed a fixed percentage to innovation-focused investments and said South Africa could design its own version.
She stressed that this is not about throwing money at every idea with a pitch deck. Capital, she said, should be deployed through experienced managers, with strict screening, staged funding and clear performance targets. Early investments are risky, but they don’t have to be reckless.
For Wierzycka, the bigger risk is doing nothing. With sluggish growth, high youth unemployment and limited access to traditional bank finance, many promising founders never get beyond the idea stage. Pension funds, she argued, could help plug that gap while still delivering long-term returns to savers.
She also pushed back against the idea that government should mandate such investments. Any shift, Wierzycka said, should be voluntary and built on a shared understanding that a healthier, more dynamic economy ultimately benefits the same people whose money is being invested.
Her call lands at a time when global investors are searching for growth stories and local entrepreneurs are battling to keep the lights on. Whether South Africa’s pension industry is willing to rewrite old rules for a new generation of businesses remains an open question, but Wierzycka has made it clear she thinks the status quo is no longer enough.
