Abstract
There is growing recognition of the vitality of small businesses to the economy. Governments worldwide prioritise the growth of the Small and Mirco Enterprises (SMEs) industry. According to Ayandibu and Vezi-Magigab's (2021) report, 36% of South Africa's GDP and 56% of workers in the private sector are employed by SMEs. South Africa has substantial unemployment with an anticipated 32.6% of the population unemployed overall (StatsSA, 2023). Two effective ways to reduce lack of employment is to support small enterprise growth and to utilising of the capacity of small firms to generate jobs (Storey, 2017). It is impossible to overestimate the endowment small enterprises make to the development of a country (Manzoor, Wei and Sahito, 2021). Small companies continue to face a number of obstacles that hamper their potential to expand both domestically and internationally, despite the significance and worth of these businesses and their contribution to economic progress (Sitharam and Hoque, 2016). However, small business can achieve sustainable growth through government interventions such as incubation programmes. According to Hou et al. (2020) and Stephens and Lyons (2022), business incubators have a pivotal role in fostering expansion of new businesses by serving as innovative hubs that facilitate connections with finance institutions and by opening up markets for SMEs. This paper investigates the role of small business support as an Local Economic Development (LED) mechanism in Gauteng using a quantitative Granger causality approach using secondary time series data from 2006 to 2022. The findings put forward that there is a unidirectional causal relationship between human development, job creation in small businesses and local economic growth, while the other variables examined in the study are statistically insignificant likely due to other factors having a bigger impact on economic growth during that time period. However, the findings still have LED implications with regards to the role of small enterprise as a growth mechanism.