Mozambique Doing Business - South Africa

  Evolution of rural development in South Africa   The National Rural Development Strategy and the Rural Development Framework  The National Rural Development Strategy (NRDS) of 1995 and the Rural Development Framework (RDF) of 1997 were the first concerted attempts to institute a rural development programme in the post-apartheid era. The NRDS was a “rights-based” 25-year vision that sought to free rural communities from poverty by creating productive jobs through supporting commercial activities, diversified agriculture, providing infrastructure, ensuring rural-urban spatial linkages, building local capabilities and promoting close collaboration amongst local government, civil society and private sector (Integrated Rural Development Sector Strategy: Draft Version, 2022). One of the limitations of the strategy is that it did not account for local institutional realities such as traditional leadership governance and customary relations could influence the direction of...

  SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT ARE BEING FACED BY THE SA TRANSPORT SECTOR The transport department is facing a challenge of deficiency in terms of capacity and reliability of transport this results in economic costs such as lower quality of life and reduced opportunities (Rodrigue&Notteboom, 1998).Inefficient transportation increases costs. The second challenged being faced is congestion caused the provision of free or low cost transport infrastructure to users .Nevertheless congestion can also be viewed as an indication of a growing economy were infrastructure and capacity have difficulties keeping up with the rising movement demands. South Africa is in desperate need of a sustainable and viable public transport system. According to the South Africa National Taxi Council taxis transport roughly 15-16 million commuters daily which is about 71% of the community public labour force. This industry is plagued with safety and health issues and a record of poor driving and death .This...

  Civics involvement in the 1994 elections  Civics and the African National Congress have taken common position on many issues. One of the common positions they took was when they warned the government against treating the local government negotiating forum (LGNF) as its advisory committee (The Star, 24 September 1993). The Local Government Negotiating Forum (LGNF) was given the task of negotiating urban management models suitable for the transition and of reaching agreement on models for submission to the elected constitution-making body. The following are examples of the common position taken by the civics and the ANC: Civic associations with the ANC in particular embarked on mass action to force the government to accede to the demands which they were making. The ANC supported the demands of the civics while the civics also supported the demands of the ANC. In its leaflet the ANC called on the people to make the apartheid system more and more unworkable and to make the count...

Shifts in South Africa's foreign policy Foreign policy gravitated away from cajoling Western countries towards strengthening ties with new friends in Asia and Latin America. There had been an attempt in 2000 by the South African government to orient South Africa's global economic strategy towards diversifying trade and economic relations away from traditional partners in the US and the EU and towards the rest of Africa, Asia and Latin America.19 This was termed the „Butterfly Strategy‟ but, as is often the case with grand government strategies, there was never a serious attempt at building capacities for execution. For example, the Department of Trade and Industry does not have fully fledged units that are sufficiently staffed to pursue commercial diplomacy in these new priority economies, that is, Brazil, Russia, India, and China and a host of other emerging economies. It also lacks a dedicated research capacity to inform South Africa's strategies on engaging with the new ...

  Private Equity and Venture Capital  Various authors, politicians and analysts as well as bureaucrats have widely proposed the importance of venture capital as a stimulant for growth, not only in particular regions, such as Silicon Valley in the United States, but as a country as a whole (Botazzi and Da Rin, 2002). Rapidly growing entrepreneurial enterprises are viewed as important sources of innovation, employment and productivity growth, and they are thus more likely to benefit from access to finance in the form of investment. Several governments, including those of Canada, Chile, Israel and Germany, have promoted increases in their supply of venture capital in order to stimulate economic growth (Cumming and MacIntosh, 2007).   Venture capital is a subsector of the larger private equity investment sphere. Private equity can be loosely defined as investing in non-listed companies or business ventures. Private equity investments can occur during various stages of a busin...

  Information on the affordability of health services   The affordability of health services is influenced by the costs of health care on the one hand and household resources to cover these costs on the other hand. The way in which health services are financed is critical to affordability, particularly whether this takes the form of out-of-pocket payments (i.e. direct payments by a patient to a health care provider, usually at the time of using a health service) or on a pre-payment basis (i.e. either through tax payments, some of which are then allocated to funding health care, or contributions to a voluntary or mandatory health insurance scheme). Out-of-pocket (OOP) payments are the most concerning from an affordability perspective given that there is considerable uncertainty about when a person may fall ill and what financial resources they may have available at that particular point in time. Internationally, millions of people are impoverished, i.e. pulled below the po...

   The economic impact of high oil prices in South Africa The results of implementing the methodologies discussed above are reported in this section. The discussion begins by focusing on specific characteristics of the South African economy. Then a discussion of the impacts at the macro-economic level is given, followed by a discussion of the impacts at the meso-economic level and finally the impacts at the micro-economic level are discussed. The South African economy  The economic performance of post apartheid South Africa has been relatively impressive, averaging 3.3% for the real GDP growth rate and 1.4% in per-capita terms for the period 1995–2005. This growth trend was an improvement, if one compares with the rates of the 1985–1994 period, where the respective average rates were 0.8% and −1.3% (South African Reserve Bank database, various years, (www.reservebank.co.za)).   Final consumption by household and by government far outstripped the contributions made by...

  Challenges facing the Informal Sector in South Africa  The informal sector plays a crucial role in the South African Economy. As discussed in earlier parts of the study, the informal sector provides employment opportunities and contributes significantly to GDP. However, the sector is faced with numerous challenges and constraints that hinder its ability to fully realize its potential as a catalyst for development. These challenges stem from various factors including economic, environmental, and social aspects. Below are some of the key challenges and constraints faced by the informal sector in South Africa.   Regulatory Constraints: Governments have been found to still treat informal sectors with past laws. In South Africa, the laws still portray workers in the informal sector as illegal and creating a nuisance (Department of Trade and Industry, 2013). Njenga and Ngambi (2014) in their study argued that the set laws enable city authorities to forcibly remove “any n...

  AGRICULTURE, RURAL POVERTY AND FOOD SECURITY While past policy has contributed to rural impoverishment, new policies will create the opportunity for reforms which will enable agriculture to make a much larger contribution to poverty alleviation and enhanced national and household food security in future. An estimated 16 million South Africans are living in poverty, with its incidence highest in rural areas and among female-headed households. It is estimated that 72 % of poor people live in rural areas, and that about 70 % of rural people are poor. The rural concentration of poverty should not detract attention from urban poverty. The point is, however, that poverty in rural areas is associated with agricultural policies which persistently marginalised small scale black farmers as their access to resources such as land, credit and technical know-how was curtailed. Food insecurity, defined as a lack of access to adequate, safe and nutritious food, is closely associated with poverty...

   Innovation as a driver of socio-economic development Through its capacity to disrupt markets by rendering old technologies obsolete and continuously creating new ones, innovation is at the heart of the industrial mutation that defines long-term growt trajectories. While the role of innovation in the dynamics of economic growth seems firmly established, much less attention has been paid to its role in economic development (Fagerberg et al.2010). In contrast to growth, which focuses on the expansion of production irrespective of who benefits from it, development is concerned more with its effects on human freedoms and the removal of constraints and deprivations that prevent people from leading the dignified lives that they have reason to live (Sen 1999). For developing countries to benefit from the advantage of innovation and new technological knowledge, it is commonly understood that they have to develop appropriate ‘capabilities’ that enable them to overcome their technolog...