| Summary: | Agro-processing and community-based tourism are rising sub-sectors with much potential to create jobs, and generate income and profits for women, the youth and SMMEs. Based on a review of the extant literature, this article examines this potential in order to project possible pathways and trajectories of women, the youth and SMMEs in these potentially lucrative sub-sectors. It advocates for the use of alternative, user-friendly technologies, including ICT that are more efficient, highly productive, reduce costs, improve occupational health, and enhance product quality and diversity steeped in their innovativeness, creativity and entrepreneurship. The article also supports the formation of self-help groups as well as clusters given the opportunities they offer for cohesion and pooling of resources for market penetration. A framework/model for market penetration is posited that would enable individual entities/firms to cluster around available resources and identify their appropriate market segment which would reduce transaction costs and pool and harness the information the network provides. It also postulates that in order to succeed, such firms should also have sound knowledge of their Product, their Packaging, Pricing, Place (cluster), and Personalisation (of the product where necessary) based on the marketing mix.
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