Mothusi Growth Score

A shared standard for measuring SME maturity, evidence and progress.

MGS gives programmes, funders and buyers one evidence-backed way to see where every business stands, what is holding it back, whether it is improving and who is ready for what comes next.

Every business receives a clear position and next action. Programme teams can see where blockers repeat and whether support worked. Funders and buyers can define readiness using the same underlying tiers, levers and evidence.

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MGS supports human decisions. It is not a credit score or an automated approval system.

The standard in practice

The same score should not lead to the same decision.

The score shows current business health. The verified tier shows the maturity foundations the business has established. The levers and evidence explain what is driving the position and what should happen next.

Growth Score & verified tier · 2,823 businesses · live

A score alone puts Puleng ahead of Mokoena but cannot explain why, while Kgalema's verified maturity could conceal a sharp deterioration. Mothusi sends one to verification, one to opportunity and one to help.

Illustrative data

Puleng is performing slightly better today, but Mokoena has established stronger operating foundations. One may need help proving its first customer. The other may need intervention around current performance.

MGS gives the institution one comparable position for both, while preserving the maturity, evidence and context behind each decision.

Portfolio selection

Find businesses that genuinely meet programme, procurement or funding conditions.

Targeted support

Route each business to the intervention its current position requires.

Defensible decisions

Trace every score, tier and next action back to the underlying levers and evidence.

Comparable across the system. Explainable down to the individual business.

The global SME ecosystem has no shared standard for understanding business maturity.

Across countries, sectors, programmes and institutions, businesses are assessed using different diagnostics, scorecards and definitions of readiness. There is no widely adopted global framework that allows a DFI to compare:

  • The underlying health of different businesses
  • Their stage of maturity
  • The strength of the evidence behind each assessment
  • The blockers preventing progress
  • Movement over time
  • Readiness for support, procurement or capital

A business described as “growth-ready” in one programme may still lack basic financial discipline or commercial proof in another.

The same business can receive several different assessments, with no common language connecting them.

Evidence is collected everywhere, but interpreted differently.

Programmes already collect valuable information through diagnostics, documents, check-ins, mentor notes, site visits, transactions and field evidence. But there is no shared way to distinguish:

  • A claim from verified proof
  • Current evidence from outdated evidence
  • A completed activity from an actual improvement
  • A temporary success from a reliable business discipline

This makes it difficult to compare conclusions produced by different partners or trust that two businesses have been assessed on the same basis.

The data exists. The common evidence framework does not.

There is no consistent way to identify and aggregate the blockers holding businesses back.

One programme may call the problem “financial literacy.” Another may call it “poor record-keeping.” A funder may describe it as “insufficient financial information.” These may all point to the same underlying constraint, but they remain trapped inside different reports and assessment models. As a result, institutions struggle to see:

  • Which blockers recur across programmes and regions
  • How many businesses share the same constraint
  • Which businesses only need evidence review
  • Which require technical support
  • Which interventions should be funded
  • Whether those interventions ultimately cleared the problem

Without a shared lever structure, individual business problems never become reliable portfolio intelligence.

Businesses have no portable understanding of where they stand.

SMEs move between programmes, banks, buyers and funding opportunities, but their progress rarely travels with them in a usable form. They are repeatedly asked to:

  • Complete another diagnostic
  • Upload the same documents
  • Explain the business again
  • Apply without knowing whether they qualify
  • Accept rejection without a clear readiness pathway

The owner often does not know which requirements have already been met, what remains outstanding or what must change before the next opportunity becomes realistic.

The institution reassesses the business, and the business starts again.

The missing shared layer

A common way to read business maturity, evidence, blockers and progress.

MGS gives every business a structured position that can be understood across programmes, sectors, regions and institutions. That position is not just a score. It includes:

  • The business's maturity tier
  • Its strengths and unresolved levers
  • The evidence behind each conclusion
  • The requirements blocking its next tier
  • Recurring issue clusters
  • Movement over time
  • Its next practical actions
  • Readiness for a particular programme, fund or opportunity

The business sees what it needs to do. The programme sees where support is required. The institution sees a comparable portfolio.

One framework, built to accommodate different businesses

Global structure. Local and sector-specific evidence.

MGS does not force every programme to use the same questionnaire or every sector to provide the same documents. A construction business may provide contracts, project records, payment-cycle evidence and CIDB information. A farmer may provide field visits, production records, animal-health evidence, yields and offtake agreements. A technology company may provide recurring revenue, customer retention, product delivery and team evidence. These different signals map into the same underlying structure:

Five maturity tiers

FormingOperatingEstablishedScalingInstitutional

The tiers describe the underlying maturity of the business, not how far it has progressed through a particular programme.

Fifty-seven growth levers

Grouped across five common areas:

  • Financial discipline
  • Commercial proof
  • Compliance and statutory
  • Operational discipline
  • Governance and team

The levers explain why a business holds its current position and what must change next.

Sector and programme overlays

Institutions can add their own diagnostics, terminology, evidence and sector requirements without creating another disconnected maturity score.

The evidence can differ. The language of maturity and progress remains shared.

Evidence is not binary

MGS records not only what is known, but how strongly it is supported.

A statement from the owner is useful, but it is not the same as a document, current system data or independent verification. MGS makes that distinction visible through graded evidence:

  1. R1Self-reportedThe business states the information.
  2. R2AI-checkedThe claim has been checked for internal consistency, contradictions and missing information.
  3. R3Document-verifiedRelevant source documents support the claim.
  4. R4Live dataCurrent transaction, operational or production data supports the claim.
  5. R5Third-party verifiedAn authorised external party has independently confirmed it.

A claim is not hidden simply because it has not yet been fully verified. Its evidence status is shown clearly. Each lever can define:

  • The evidence that is acceptable
  • The minimum evidence grade required
  • Whether AI checking is sufficient
  • Whether a mentor, field officer or specialist must verify it
  • How current the evidence must be
  • What must happen before the lever can clear

The score summarises the position. The evidence grade tells the institution how much confidence to place in it.

Observed and verified positions

New information can change what Mothusi sees. Verified progression requires the required proof.

Monthly check-ins, uploaded documents, mentor notes, field visits and live activity may indicate that a business has improved or deteriorated. Mothusi can update the observed position as those signals arrive. The verified position advances only when the required evidence and review conditions have been met. This prevents a business from appearing stronger because:

  • It completed a programme stage
  • It attended training
  • It made an unsupported claim
  • It uploaded an incomplete document
  • An AI system inferred that progress probably occurred

Where human judgement is required, a human remains responsible for the decision.

Design programmes around the standard

Start with the business outcome, then build the programme around the levers required to reach it.

A programme can define the businesses it wants to support by:

  • Entry tier
  • Priority levers
  • Existing evidence
  • Sector and geography
  • Readiness gaps
  • Desired graduation position

It can then design:

  • Diagnostics
  • Learning
  • Mentor assignments
  • Applied tasks
  • Specialist support
  • Field visits
  • Evidence requirements
  • Sign-off rules
  • Graduation criteria

The programme is no longer designed around modules alone.

It is designed around the business requirements that participants must clear.

Target technical assistance where it will matter most

Issue clusters turn individual blockers into portfolio intelligence.

One business may have weak financial records. When 39 businesses share the same open lever, the institution can see:

  • How many businesses are affected
  • Which programmes and regions they belong to
  • Which are evidence-ready
  • Which await review
  • Which need technical support
  • Which intervention is most appropriate
  • Whether the issue subsequently cleared

Six weeks later, the DFI can see whether the intervention changed the underlying lever.

Technical assistance becomes targeted, measurable and directly connected to the business constraint it was intended to address.

Design funding and procurement around transparent readiness

Define what readiness means once, then see where every business stands against it.

A bank, fund, buyer or programme can define the conditions relevant to a specific opportunity:

The institution still carries out underwriting, procurement review or programme selection. MGS does not make the decision.

It gives the institution and business a shared, transparent view of the conditions around that decision.

Businesses no longer have to start again

The same Growth Record can carry progress from one programme or opportunity to the next.

Instead of completing another diagnostic, uploading the same documents and explaining the business again, the owner can see:

  • What has already been verified
  • What remains current
  • What has expired
  • Which requirements have been cleared
  • Why the business qualifies
  • What still prevents it from qualifying
  • What action would improve its position

The next institution receives an authorised view of the relevant evidence rather than another unstructured application.

The business carries forward what it has already proved.

The vision

The goal is not another score. It is a shared operating standard for SME development.

Accounting standards did not make every company identical. They created a common language for reading financial position, comparing performance and interpreting evidence across different companies and institutions. MGS aims to play a similar role for SME development.

Not by replacing:

  • Programme judgement
  • Sector expertise
  • Credit underwriting
  • Procurement decisions
  • Specialist verification
  • Human responsibility

But by giving the ecosystem a common structure for understanding:

  • Business maturity
  • Evidence strength
  • Development blockers
  • Progress over time
  • Readiness for what comes next

With a shared standard:

  • Businesses understand where they stand.
  • Programmes can design around measurable maturity gaps.
  • Delivery partners can contribute to the same record.
  • DFIs can compare movement across programmes and regions.
  • Technical assistance can target recurring blockers.
  • Banks and funds can define readiness transparently.
  • Buyers can screen suppliers with better context.
  • Progress can travel with the business instead of disappearing when a programme ends.

One business record. One shared language. Many programmes, funders and opportunities.

That is the long-term ambition: to make SME maturity and progress as legible, comparable and evidence-backed as financial performance became through shared accounting standards.

This is an ambition for the role MGS can serve, not a claim of current institutional status or equivalence to established accounting bodies.

Give every programme and portfolio the same language for business progress.

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MGS is decision support, not a credit score. Evidence informs the decision; authorised people remain responsible for it.