Christine Engelbrecht, head of the IDC’s tourism business unit, said the Nonoti project was one of three key projects the IDC was tackling in line with its current strategy to improve the spread of tourism businesses particularly in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape and poor rural areas in other provinces.

Tourism is one of the priority sectors identified in the government’s New Growth Path economic plan and the IDC invested R249m in tourism projects in the last financial year, creating 944 jobs. iLembe’s coastline includes Ballito Bay, which is claimed to be one of the fastest- growing areas in SA following the opening last year of the nearby King Shaka airport.

Ms Engelbrecht said the tourism industry would take time to recover from the turmoil in financial markets, major hotel groups were consolidating and an oversupply of rooms meant no new major developments in SA’s city centres were likely at present. "If we are going to attract visitors we need to increase the product offering," she said.

Other tourism projects the IDC is funding include a R40m kite-surfing facility in Langebaan in the Western Cape and an extreme sport facility being planned with the Northern Cape provincial government.

The IDC’s tourism unit has an exposure of about R3bn involving 96 clients. It mainly provides loan financing, but also occasionally takes equity stakes in some of the projects it finances. The state-funded development finance institution finances many tourism-related activities but not stand-alone restaurants, casinos and property development in the purest sense.

Ms Engelbrecht said the IDC was focusing on underdeveloped parts of SA, the rest of the continent and niche tourism sectors. The IDC was also looking at tourism businesses in townships, developments on community land such as the iLembe project, and other broad-based black empowerment initiatives.