Stoking job creation in any country is a tricky thing, and South Africa is no exception, as the government faces an uphill battle in transforming what 20 years ago was a lopsided, closed and exclusionary system into an inclusive economy. The task is daunting. Unemployment ticked up to 25.5% at the end of the first half of 2014, and youth unemployment is estimated to be double...
As with many emerging markets, small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) make up a large proportion of South Africa’s private sector. According to the government’s economic blueprint, the National Development Plan, 90% of planned new jobs will be created by SMEs by 2030. To enable this, the government has rolled out a new department charged with aiding SME activity, the...
The South African economy grappled with headwinds in early 2014, although it did avoid a recession in the second quarter of the year. The country’s long-term fundamentals remain fairly attractive, but the new cabinet still faced a tricky job of stimulating growth over the remainder of the year. The economy grew 0.6% in the second quarter of 2014, after shrinking by an...
Africa’s second-biggest economy and by far its most globally integrated in terms of capital and trade flows, South Africa has had to navigate challenging waters in recent years. The economy has come a long way since apartheid ended 20 years ago, with significant improvements in both productivity and capacity – and a GDP that is now 2.5 times larger – but domestic and exogenous...
South Africa’s ascent as a major diplomatic and economic player within Africa and on the global stage over the past two decades has been swift. In December 1994, less than a year after winning South Africa’s first democratic election in a landslide, the African National Congress (ANC) released a document outlining the party’s perspective on foreign policy. “South Africa is...
Chapter three of South Africa’s 1996 Constitution begins “...in the Republic, government is constituted as national, provincial and local spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated.” This sentence, which underpins the nation’s federalist system of authority, has had a profound impact on the development and implementation of government policies...
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