The rapidly changing world of business leverages technology, favourable international trade policy, as well as more readily accessible skills and know-how to overcome traditional geographic market barriers; thereby creating a highly competitive and dynamically evolving global market place.
Despite considerable economic challenges, including stunted economic growth, stubbornly high unemployment, widespread poverty and pervasive inequality, South Africa is embracing this change and is responding proactively to the opportunity that this evolving international market place has to offer.
The National Development Plan (NDP), South Africa’s latest economic blueprint, singles out the export sector as having the potential to become an engine of rapid and more job-intensive and inclusive economic growth. 

The Global Export Accelerator Partnership (GEAP) is guiding enterprises on their export journey, while increasing the reach and impact of business organizations and improving the export ecosystem to enable easier access to international markets for South African Black-owned enterprises.

GEAP has an overall development objective of:

• Supporting export-led economic activity
• Facilitating opportunities for collaboration between large multi-national corporates and Black-owned enterprises
• Unlocking entrepreneurial opportunities for emerging Black businesses
• Enabling the creation of export-orientated employment

In 2016, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, partnered with the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) to create the first Export Focused Accelerator.

The Global Business Accelerator had an overall goal of stimulating job creation and income generation for an original target of 30 SMEs by providing them with a suit of export orientated development support ranging from training, mentoring, product development and international market research, to international market access and business linkages. When the partnership ended in November 2018, 75 SMEs had participated, and 120 new jobs were created.

Following the successful completion of the 3-year project, a number of key national stakeholders, including chambers in South Africa were interested in upscaling this model. A number of interested parties led by the SASDC engaged with GIZ E4D to explore opportunities for upscaling the model through a collaborative partnership with the intention to achieve greater economic impact with a national implementation footprint. 
GEAP is the culmination of such engagements and the subsequent multi-partner agreement reached to scale up the original SME Export Incubator initiative and support a larger number of Black owned SME’s across the country with export development services that will enable them to expand their client-base beyond South Africa and service markets in other parts of the world.