Finance is a notable barrier to the growth of small businesses in South Africa. Scholars agree that accessible and affordable finance can help grow small businesses and develop the economy. Even with such evidence South Africa still has a poor record of manufacturing besides the progress made in agro-processing, automotive assembly, and mining. The country imports large amounts of clothing, home goods, and equipment. This paper investigates the quest to create a growing manufacturing sector by the South African government through funding. This paper is a desk review of the funding processes at the Industrial Development Corporation, Small Enterprise Finance Agency, and Gauteng Enterprise Propeller. It provides an overarching view of requirements, processes, and context. The analysis juxtaposes the requirements versus realities of manufacturing as cited in the introduction and the literature review. It is evident from this review research that South Africa does indeed have a problem of what comes first in its quest for growing small-scale manufacturing. The type of requirements, support available, and contextual understandings must be studied by policymakers equally or more like technical abilities of manufacturers. This paper further suggests that a developmental approach to financing small scale-manufacturing be adopted.