Access to free medical treatment is a constitutional right in South Africa, but though the government has devoted at least 12% of its budget to health care annually since 2010, the Department of Health (DoH) itself has characterised the system as “inequitable, with the privileged few having disproportionate access to health services”. Expenditure is split fairly evenly between the public and...
With a proliferation of multi-language broadcasters and publishers catering to a broader regional audience, South Africa is home to one of the continent’s larger media sectors. The media industry is dominated by a group of multinational conglomerates that work across multiple platforms, with the largest player reaching a market cap of $4.7bn. While print sales and advertising revenues are in...
Despite a decline in agricultural production as a percentage of GDP in the past decade, agriculture remains a key component of South Africa’s economy and one of the country’s largest employers. In 2013 the sector as a whole contributed $5.48bn to GDP, on the back of primary annual agricultural production of $17.78bn. Agricultural production by volume rose by 2.7% in 2013. This can be...
The South African tourism sector has been a major benefactor of the opening up of the economy and the country’s reintegration with the global community. Tourism’s economic contribution is taking on added importance in light of the fact that its expansion has been outperforming growth in the economy at large. The sector’s total contribution to GDP, for example, is expected to grow by 3.6% per...
Renamed KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in 1994 following the merging of Natal province with KwaZulu, KZN is South Africa’s second largest provincial economy, serving as a strategically important base for manufacturing and exports. Though it occupies only 8% of the country’s land, KZN is responsible for 26.9% of its agricultural output, 21.6% of its manufacturing and 22.3% of its transport, storage and...
Four main mobile operators and two fixed-line players cater to subscribers in a market that – like much of the emerging world – is seeing slowing subscriber growth and price cuts encourage a shift towards new value-added services. Delays by government agencies were cited as the biggest problem facing mobile operators, particularly in terms of getting permission to build infrastructure....
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