The aim of this seminar was to develop a rigorous economic framework to evaluate the SMME sector in South Africa. There is a rich tradition of SMME work in SA and our aim was not to simply reproduce another SMME report. Instead, to date the synergies between the mainstream economy and the SMME sector have been rather weak and the aim of the project was to simply contextualise the SMME sector in the larger economic debate in the country.