Revamping Local Economic Development Policy in South Africa

Abstract

Over the past 25 years, local economic development (LED) issues have been of pressing concern in South Africa. The objective of this chapter is to interpret emerging frameworks and platforms for revamping and redirecting LED in South Africa. The international evidence and debates around LED, particularly in the global South, provide a compelling case for continued efforts to strengthen LED activities rather than revert to top-down policies that have demonstrably failed to deal with local challenges across nearly all of the global South. In South Africa, a major institutional actor in changing LED frameworks is the national Department of Science and Technology (DST). The growing influence of DST thinking on LED policy in South Africa is marked with the release in 2017 of the latest iteration of the National Framework for Local Economic Development, which asserts the centrality of innovation and the imperative to create innovation-driven local economies.