Preventing Elite Capture in Economic Empowerment: A Systematic Review of Inclusivity in South African B-BBEE Enterprise and Supplier Development

Introduction: South Africa’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) framework seeks to widen economic participation, yet the supplied evidence indicates that empowerment benefits may remain concentrated among relatively advantaged groups. Concerns therefore persist regarding elite capture, unequal benefit distribution, weak accountability, and limited evidence on how Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) screening and targeting operate in practice.Methods: The researcher-selected databases and information sources were Google Scholar, ERIC. The eligibility protocol restricted publication years to 1994–2026. The exact calendar date of search execution was not recorded in the verified identification provenance; this is distinct from the publication-year eligibility range. A systematic review was conducted using Google Scholar and ERIC, with eligibility restricted to English-language peer-reviewed studies published from 1994 to 2026.Results: The synthesis indicates that B-BBEE benefits are reported as insufficiently broad-based and vulnerable to elite concentration. Transparency, accountability, public participation, civil-society involvement, co-production, and partnerships are presented as safeguards, but direct evidence that these mechanisms prevent capture in ESD programmes is limited. Finance, information, training, and skills development may widen participation, although beneficiary experiences and business-performance effects are mixed. Direct evidence on eligibility verification, conflict-of-interest controls, appeals, audits, and procurement-level anti-capture mechanisms is substantially limited.Discussion/Conclusion: The evidence supports a governance and inclusion framework for reducing capture but does not establish that existing ESD screening or targeting practices have demonstrably prevented elite capture. Conclusions are constrained by heterogeneous evidence, limited South African coverage, methodological uncertainty, and a PRISMA identification discrepancy requiring verification.