Economic Development In South Africa Research Articles

Problems Experienced by Immigrant Spaza Shop Owners in South Africa

AbstractImmigrant-owned spaza shops impact positively on the economic development of South Africa. The study investigated the problems that are perceived by immigrant spaza shop owners as negativel...

Exploring the Adequate Strategies Adopted By Women to Sustain the Growth and Development of Entrepreneurship in the Nkonkobe Municipality, Eastern Cape

Women entrepreneurs can contribute significantly to economic development in South Africa, but their contribution has not been adequately studied and developed. This study examined the adequate stra...

Effects of Xenophobic Attacks on the Economic Development of South Africa

There exist doubts whether the policy of South Africa pertinently supports the rights of the sufferers of crime. If the right of the sufferers of offense, for instance, business owners are not prot...

Re-engaging with spatial economic development: The recent experience of regional and local economic development in South Africa

Local and regional development trajectories across the global north and south exhibit both convergent and divergent tendencies (Barca et al., 2012; Nel and Rogerson, 2009; Pike et al., 2014; Reddy and Wallis, 2012; Rogerson and Rogerson, 2010). One of the distinctive features of SouthAfrica’s development pathway in the post-apartheid era has been the reinvigorated embrace of regional and local development policy and interventions. This characteristic exemplifies the broader argument internationally that there has been ‘renewed emphasis upon the region as the locus for economic, social and political action and the roles of institutions in local and regional development’ (Pike et al., 2006: 130). Spatially based economic interventions have had a long and contested history in South Africa where support for marketbased interventions have sat uncomfortably alongside the direct pursuit of political objectives and of attempts to use economic support measures to achieve social and political outcomes. After Second World War and until the democratic transition of the early 1990s, Keynesian state thinking was used to justify the apartheid’s states efforts to divide and separately develop and economically support different parts of the country and different areas within cities on racially segregated lines. Parallel efforts included import-substituting industrialisation and a growth point strategy targeted to both develop the country’s peripheral areas and to offer national economic development opportunities for the racial reserves which had been established (Bell, 1987; Nel, 1999; Tomlinson and Addleson, 1987; Wellings and Black, 1986a, 1986b). After the 1994 political transition, there was an initial reluctance to engage in spatial interventions which were seen as being tainted by associations with apartheid planning (Oranje, 2010). Nevertheless, a number of spatially targeted interventions were applied

Thinking regionally: Aviation and development implications in the Karoo region, South Africa

ABSTRACTThis study focuses on regional economic development in South Africa, across provincial political jurisdictions. The article argues that remote hinterlands can be more usefully understood as forming an integrated whole, rather than functioning as the poor rural cousins of their provincial metropoles. This article considers three propositions: that key transport projects (such as airports) may unlock regional development; that this may stimulate regional spatial integration; and that this may spur the South African government to address its weak regional planning system. All three propositions are speculative, drawn from the international literature, but they contribute to an argument for greater spatial coherence in South African planning in rural regions. The argument is illustrated with reference to the Karoo region of South Africa, and the potential of a new airport to impact on regional economic dynamics. Furthermore, the article argues that such impacts will require new regional planning systems, which are currently absent from the South African political system.

Climate change, tourism and local economic development in South Africa

Climate change is a major factor impacting upon local economic development futures. South Africa is one of the most vulnerable parts of the world in terms of projected climate change. This article examines issues around climate change impacts for South Africa’s tourism sector and in particular implications for local economic development. It is argued that, whilst tourism represents one of the main drivers of local economic development in small towns and peripheral areas, as a result of capacity and financial constraints municipalities often struggle to undertake effective tourism planning. Accordingly, capacity building for tourism practitioners and policy makers around climate change must become an essential component of the roll out of government tourism support programming to enable South African local governments to manage and sustain partnerships with the private sector, to ensure a deeper understanding of how municipalities can manage the tourism assets within their areas, and to maximise the opportunities of tourism for local economic development.

Planning for local economic development in spaces of despair: Key trends in South Africa’s ‘distressed areas’

South Africa’s distressed areas are the country’s spaces of despair. Alongside national government interventions designed to target spatial inequalities, there are Local Economic Development policy interventions taking place. The objective in this article is to analyse the state of current local economic development policy proposals in the municipalities that are categorised as part of South Africa’s distressed areas. After reviewing the roots and persistence of socio-economic and spatial inequalities in South Africa, attention turns to dissect the key challenges and directions of local economic development policy and planning across the distressed areas. The local economic development policy foci in distressed areas are described and set against a national profile for local economic development. Overall, it is argued that given the weak state of local economic development in South Africa, its constraints and limited successes, minimal prospects exist for local economic development plans across the distressed areas to impact substantially the structural nature of spatial inequalities in South Africa. New policy frameworks for local economic development in these areas are, therefore, needed.

The contested trajectory of applied local economic development in South Africa

Local economic development is one of the key development strategies pursued by localities in South Africa. Local economic development is a core local government mandate and one which is notionally conceptualised as allowing for the pursuit of both socio-economic redress and economic development. Despite the significant support put into applied local economic development for nearly 20 years, results have been modest and concerns about a potential over-focus on pro-poor local economic development, at the expense of simultaneously working with the private sector on pro-market interventions, have been identified as a stumbling block to the potential success of this developmental approach. This paper charts the development of local economic development policy and practise in the country before focussing on the findings of a detailed analysis of the local economic development strategies adopted by all of the country’s 278 local authorities. Findings show that most local governments are choosing a narrow band of pro-poor interventions to focus their attention on, with little support, except in the larger centres, being given to more market-focussed interventions.

Local economic development beyond the centre: Reflections on South Africa’s secondary cities

Research on local economic development in South Africa has been dominated by reflections on the larger metropolitan areas, while secondary cities have received scant attention. This paper evaluates local economic development initiatives in six secondary cities in South Africa. It advances three arguments based on South African and international literature. First, the local economic development strategies for these cities pay too little attention to creating effective links with their rural hinterlands. Second, while globalization increases both vulnerabilities and opportunities, these cities are ill-prepared to deal with the former or benefit from the latter. Third, local economic development strategies tend to focus on cluster initiatives, which in essence are inward looking. Such strategies increase competition with the larger metropolitan areas. The secondary cities are unlikely to compete effectively with these larger areas if they continue to follow inward-looking or cluster-oriented approaches.

The viability of using the Witwatersrand gold mine tailings for brickmaking

South Africa is a mineral-rich country with metals such as gold, copper, and platinum group metals being exploited to a significant extent in the country’s mining history. Mining generates large volumes of tailings, with consequent disposal and environmental problems. By far the most gold that has been mined in South Africa (98%) has come from the Witwatersrand goldfields (Messner, 1991). The gold mines in this area are situated around an ancient sea (over 2700 million years old) where rivers deposited sediments in the form of sand and gravel that became the conglomerate containing the gold (Messner, 1991). The extensive exploitation of the gold resources has led to numerous mine tailings heaps scattered around the Witwatersrand Basin. As long as mining contributes significantly to the economic development of South Africa, generation of these tailings is inevitable. The major environmental impacts from waste disposal at mine sites can be divided into two categories – the loss of productive land following its conversion to a waste storage area and the introduction of sediment, acidity, and other contaminants into surrounding surface and groundwater (Mining Facts, 2014). The gold mining and processing wastes contain large amounts of sulphide minerals such as pyrite, which generate acid mine drainage (AMD) (Rosner and van Schalkwyk, 2000). South Africa is currently faced with the challenges resulting from AMD and the government and mining companies are under pressure to find viable solutions to this problem. This, coupled with the increasing landfill costs, and stricter implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation, has caused the scientific community to focus on finding innovative methods of utilizing mine tailings. Even though some applications of the generated tailings have been exploited, such as in the building of slimes dams and backfill in underground mines, these uses do not take up more than a fraction of the total amount of tailings in the Witwatersrand region. There is therefore a significant need to developing other long-term, commercially viable uses for mine tailings in order to minimize the disposal costs and the impact on the environment. According to Statistics South Africa (2013), South Africa has a human population of about 52.98 million. This population is growing, and this consequently results in an increasing demand for housing, which places severe stress on the natural resources used for construction materials. Conventional bricks are produced from clay fired in high-temperature kilns or from ordinary Portland cement (OPC) concrete. Clay, the common material used for The viability of using the Witwatersrand gold mine tailings for brickmaking

Agritourism and local economic development in South Africa

Abstract The role of tourism for local economic development (LED) is a topic of critical importance for geographers. In the case of South Africa tourism is a priority sector for national economic development. The significance of research issues around tourism and LED is underlined by the ‘developmental’ mandate of local governments. Although tourism has received attention in a growing body of LED writings on South Africa issues around agritourism so far have been overlooked. Agritourism represents an evolving form of rural tourism which is targeted at mainly urban consumers. Against the background of a review of international scholarship on agritourism this article explores its potential implications for LED planning in South Africa. A national audit of agritourism is presented which shows its uneven geographical distribution. Agritourism is of special significance for small town economic development in South Africa’s intermediate tourism spaces. Policy suggestions are offered for strengthening agritourism as a driver for LED in South Africa.

Battlefields Tourism: The status of heritage tourism in Dundee, South Africa

Abstract Heritage tourism is a significant contemporary facet of tourism in many developing countries. This paper analyses the economic opportunities for battlefield- heritage tourism in South Africa by examining the battlefields route within KwaZulu-Natal. Through structured interviews with stakeholders and structured questionnaires with visitors and local residents, this research explores the understanding of heritage tourism as well as perceptions of its influence on the physical landscape and gauges the importance of this form of tourism as a driver for local economic development in South Africa. Dundee, a small coal-mining town in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa - where several battlefields are found, is used as a case study. The study demonstrates that several issues need to be addressed if this niche of cultural and heritage tourism is to be a sustainable and responsible form of tourism in South Africa.

An assessment of the impacts of acid mine drainage on socio-economic development in the Witwatersrand: South Africa

For more than a century, the mining sector has played a crucial role in the economic development of South Africa. However, it also causes immense harm to the country’s people and environment. Gold and coal mining have serious implications for water management. The problem arises when contaminated water in the form of acid mine drainage (AMD) reaches the river basin systems and affects water usages important for socio-economic development. This article looks at the impacts of AMD on different constituencies in the Witwatersrand Basin for the South African society and on sustainable socio-economic development. It includes different responses by the media, civil society, scientists and Government on AMD, how they interpret AMD and its effects on socio-economic development.

The Role of Small and Medium Enterprises in Alleviating the Development Challenges Facing South Africa

The study highlighted some of the development challenges facing South Africa. These include high levels of unemployment, poverty and income inequality. The objective of the study is to examine the critical role that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play in alleviating some of the development challenges facing South Africa. SMEs are expected to be an important vehicle to address the challenges of job creation, sustainable economic growth, equitable distribution of income and the overall stimulation of economic development in South Africa. The study finds that the perception of entrepreneurial opportunities and capabilities has increased since 2001 but still relatively low by international standard. In addition, the rate of business establishment is much lower than the rate of discontinuance. There is a net loss of small businesses. These factors may negatively impact on the ability of SMEs to help in alleviating some of the development challenges facing South Africa. Policy measures to improve the low rate of business establishment and reduce the high rate of discontinuance are of critical and urgent importance in South Africa. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p270

The case for nuclear electricity in South Africa – A political alignment framework

AbstractEnergy is essential for economic development of South Africa. All areas for development and economic growth i.e. reducing poverty and improving quality of life require affordable access to reliable energy services. When the challenges of energy provision to the population of a state remain unresolved, the resulting misery often leads to conflicts and violence, which in turn affect development efforts and impact on regional and global stability.The Integrated Resource Plan 2010 (DoE 2010) allocates 9.6 GW electrical generation capacity to nuclear technology. At the date of writing this paper –almost 5 years later‐ this allocation has not yet been committed to a build program. This situation is perhaps not surprising, since the National Development Plan, generally viewed as a vision and master plan for South Africa's economic development, is not supportive of the nuclear option (NPC 2011). The plan calls for further investigation into the need for nuclear electricity, citing gas and shale gas as possible alternatives for base load power generation.Against this background, the paper presents a framework for moving towards political consensus on the generation of electricity using nuclear technology. The framework builds on the notion that a “political system” can be characterized as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS). It defines political consensus by applying seven criteria which should be met for successful consensus building. These criteria, originally developed by Innes, (Innes and Booher 2009) have been thoroughly tested, and are increasingly used as a strategy to achieve consensus amongst stakeholders on complex and controversial planning and policy tasks. (Innes and Booher 2009).This paper presents a set of principles on which a political alignment framework should be founded, for example: that South Africa's economic development vision and long term economic development plan should be elevated above party political considerations; that people power is the lifeblood of a democratic society. Give the people the power of knowledge, and allow them to make their own informed decisions ‐ in this case regarding nuclear.A description is presented as to how the criteria for consensus building could be met in the South African political system. This description is informed by the development of nuclear lectricity in other political systems in both the eastern and western worlds. It further draws on the views of key political parties in respect of nuclear electricity, and proposes that political parties should implement within their own ranks, their own consensus building initiatives in respect of these national priorities.The paper concludes that if the consensus seeking framework is executed in an honest and transparent way, it could lead to consensus in respect of nuclear electricity, not only on a political but also at a national level.

English

Economic development in South Africa (SA) has been an issue that has been on top of the government’s agenda for many years now. Whilst SA as a nation is well endowed in terms of natural resources, the skewed distribution of these resources has left rural economies at a great disadvantage when compared to the urban ones. Questions have thus been asked about how best to address this imbalance and boost rural economies so that every citizen enjoys an adequate share of the nation’s resources. One common suggestion for achieving this goal has been that of promoting smallholder agriculture, especially since this form of farming is dominant in the country’s rural areas where at least 70% of the country’s poorest households dwell. The basis for such an argument has been that smallholder agriculture can stimulate rural development as it is labour-intensive which in turn translates to high employment opportunities being created. The sector also dominates in the deepest corners of the nation where poverty is rife and their survival means enough food could be produced to sustain these households. A healthy smallholder sector has also been proven to facilitate backward and forward linkages between various industries with income flowing both ways. Nevertheless, the success of the smallholder sector is dependent on the removal of certain barriers that have, in some cases, forced some farmers to seek alternative livelihood strategies other than farming. This paper therefore seeks to discuss the characteristics of smallholder agriculture which are crucial to understand prior to using the sector to develop rural SA. It also brings to light some of the factors that have limited the growth of this sector and concludes by recommending a few solutions that could help eliminate or at least reduce the impact of these barriers.   Keys words: Smallholder farmers, poverty alleviation, economic development, rural income, employment creation.

Reframing place-based economic development in South Africa: the example of local economic development

Abstract Local Economic Development (LED) planning is a place-based approach to development planning and increasingly significant across much of the global South. One of the key challenges facing LED planning is the necessity to adjust planning in relation to the dynamic nature of both international and national framework conditions. The purpose of this article is to show this challenge by examining the dynamic nature of the national policy environment impacting upon LED planning in South Africa, a country which has a relatively long history of LED planning. Five dimensions of the changing landscape of national economic development planning in South Africa are identified. These relate to (a) LED within the context of new national economic and development plans; (b) initiatives for reindustrialising the South African economy, the associated importance of localisation and promotion of the green economy; (c) changing programmes around small business development; (d) shifts in rural development interventions; and (e) the fluid spatial context within which LED planning as a form of placebased economic development is embedded.

The globality of the local? A decolonial perspective on local economic development in South Africa

This article employs the decolonial thinking paradigm to dispel the long-held myth that Local Economic Development strategies are universal panacea that can result in the development of all local economies globally. It is opined in this article that the growing literature celebrating the salience of Local Economic Development strategies often downplay how these strategies at times result in the reproduction of economic inequalities. This is primarily so in cities of the Global South which remain weighed down by the burden of colonial and apartheid history. For these repressive systems of governance relegated the colonised to the zones of non-being where opportunities for economic development and self-realisation were deliberately foreclosed. As will be made apparent below, the burden of colonial and apartheid history did not miraculously disappear with the advent of political independence. Instead, the spectre of coloniality – defined as the continuation of economic, socio-spatial and epistemological domination of the hitherto colonised, still looms large. The primary argument advanced here, therefore, is that Local Economic Development strategies implemented in highly socio-spatially fragmented and economically uneven societies can further exacerbate these inequalities. The case of post-apartheid South Africa is used to highlight how Local Economic Development strategies implemented in highly divided societies often reproduce economic and socio-spatial inequalities.

The Link between Venture Capital Supply Factors and Economic Development in South Africa

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new theoretical model for the factors that influence the supply of venture capital investment in South Africa. Based on extant literature, the study puts forward a tentative framework to explain the link between venture capital supply factors and economic development. To this point, the paper has established that there is a link between venture capital supply and economic development and the link is mediated by formal job creation in the MSME sector. The framework depicted in Figure 4 shows three key determinants of venture capital supply including the MSME density, the extent to which industrialisation has taken place and the share of natural resource contribution to GDP. While the utility of the framework is limited without empirical evidence, the study draws attention to the need of the South African economy to find mechanisms of increasing formal job creation in the small and medium enterprise sector while simultaneously focusing on increasing the rate of industrialising the economy. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n9p18

The Influence of Short-Term Insurance Industry on the Finance-Growth Nexus in South Africa

This study seeks to establish the influence of the short-term insurance industry on financial and economic development in South Africa. The study uses quarterly data from 1994 to 2009 to perform the Johansen (1991) co-integration tests and subsequently the Granger causality tests to establish the relationship between the short-term insurance industry and the finance-growth nexus. The study is premised on the ‘demand-following’ and ‘supply-leading’ propositions by Patrick (1966). Results show that the insurance industry has a positive relationship with economic development. The development of the short-insurance industry heavily relies on economic development rather than on banking sector development and financial deepness. This suggests that formulating policies that promote economic growth directly leads to the development of the short-term insurance industry in South Africa confirming the demand-following proposition. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n1p489