Policies for South Africa's Industrialisation

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

In this paper, we build on our earlier writings to present an overall design for the conduct of industrial policy in a low-to middle-income country. Our reflections have been stimulated by the specific problems faced by South Africa and by our discussions with business and government officials in that country. In the penultimate section of the paper, we present specific recommendations for the South African government. However, we expect these ideas to have wide relevance to a range of other countries as well. We take the main purpose of industrial policy to be to speed up the process of structural change towards higher productivity activities. This is a challenge that is common to all developing countries. JEL -codes: H, -, -* We thank Dana Brudowsky for editorial assistance.

2019

This is a discussion on the industrial revolution in South Africa and a proposal on some policy positions for an inclusive industrial revolution.

World Development, 1989

2008

This dissertation considers the coherence of the prescriptions contained within three recently released government frameworks: the National Framework for Sustainable Development, National Industrial Policy Framework and National Framework for Local Economic Development. A central assumption in this regard is that a level of coherence in policy prescriptions is necessary for effective and complementary implementation. Each of these frameworks has been developed in the context of renewed commitment from the South African state to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014. It is likely therefore that the frameworks will affect resource allocation with outcomes which will have impacts on South African society at large. Thus coherence is an important consideration.

Law and Development Review, 2018

This paper examines whether the current South African legal framework and subsequent policies post-1994 encourage and have emphatically fostered industrialisation in South Africa primarily and Southern Africa more generally. The primary contention of this paper is that the South African State, unlike fellow Southern African States, has a long history with industrialisation and should have laid the foundations for Southern Africa’s large scale industrialisation trajectory. However, the post-1994 government vision for South Africa has never had a Law and Development philosophy that prioritises and fosters industrialisation. Industrial Promotion in Africa, is understood as being concerned with drafting, strategically implementing and investing in industrially minded action plans. Through the prism of Local Economic Development policy and legislation in the Sedibeng region, this paper contends that industrialisation is still a farfetched endeavour despite industrially minded policies li...

SSRN Electronic Journal

provides economic analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research. UNU-WIDER acknowledges specific programme contribution from the National Treasury of South Africa to its project 'Regional Growth and Development in Southern Africa' and core financial support to its work programme from the governments of Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

2016

A research project submitted at the University of the Witwatersrand, Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development (CSID), in partial fulfilment of the Master of Commerce in Development Theory and Policy Degree. March 2015

Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 2010

The apartheid state's selective intervention to shape South Africa's industrial development around the minerals energy complex included the establishment and support of state-owned enterprises in chemicals and steel in the form of Sasol and Iscor. Both of these companies were privatised at the end of the 1980s and appear to be infant industries that have grown-up. Under democracy, we find the corporate strategies of the two companies to have been very important in the continued skewed resource and energy oriented industrial development path of South Africa. Our evaluation of industrial policy through the lens of its engagement with, and impact on, the decisions of these two companies reveals it has largely failed to come to terms with the interests and power of these companies and the implications for the economy.

2014

1. Introduction South Africa's external trade policy and level of openness to the world economy occupies an increasingly prominent position in political economy debates about the country's growth and development path. The government's most auspicious economic policies--namely the National Development Plan (National Planning Commission 2011), the New Growth Path (Economic Development Department 2010), and the National Industrial Policy Framework (NIPF) and its annual Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) (Department of Trade and Industry, 2007)--all call for more 'developmental' trade policies to shift the structure of the economy onto a more sustainable, diversified and labour-absorbing industrial development path. The government's focus on a more strategic trade policy stands in contrast to the immediate post-apartheid years, when extensive tariff and trade reforms were pursued without any overarching industrial policy framework. The trade liberalisation proj...