THE IMPACT OF COVID19 ON LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

Local Economic Development is an approach towards economic development which allows and encourages local people to work together to achieve sustainable economic growth and development thereby bringing economic benefits and improved quality of life for all residents in a local municipal area. As a programme, LED is intended to maximize the economic potential of all municipal localities throughout the country and, to enhance the resilience of the macro-economic growth through increased local economic growth, employment creation and development initiatives within the context of sustainable development (Bibri, S.E., 2021). LED is globally, but especially in developing countries, seen as the solution to improved quality of life, unemployment, poverty, and inequality. Development economics is focused on the economic, cultural, and political requirements to effect fast institutional reform so as to distribute the benefits of economic progress to the broadest section of the population, thereby ensuring that the poverty trap is broken (Eldridge, E., Rancourt, M.E., Langley, A. and Héroux, D., 2022). In order to achieve this, government intervention by means of policy formulation is needed as a component of development economics. With this background this paper will look into the impact of covid 19 on Local economic development and innovation in the Eastern Cape Municipalities, as this pandemic is threatening the stability of local government economy. In this study of the impact of covid19 on local economic development policy, evaluation theory was considered in the conversion of inputs that pertain to community needs.