Identifying Opportunities to Drive Demand for ICT in South Africa
This report is part of the Vision 2020 process of the Department of Communications. It reports on a three-part analysis of the links between ICT investment and job creation in South Africa. It reviews barriers to broadband usage, assesses demographic trends, and offers a global review of demand-side interventions. The presentation suggests a three-pronged strategy…
read more >>Identifying Employment-creating Sectors in South Africa: The Role of Services Industries
Altman explores scenarios for employment creation, with an emphasis on services. It considers whether the government’s current policies for the formal services sector will achieve its 2014 target of halving unemployment. New employment has mainly been found in the formal and non-formal services, and future employment will probably come from such sectors as business services,…
read more >>Translating Sectoral Growth into Job Creation: A View of South Africa’s Tourism Industry
Tourism has been identified as a priority job creation sector. Lowitt tests the realism of policymakers’ expectations for the sector. It focuses on three key areas: understanding demand; understanding how demand is translated into job creation; and understanding how the sector interacts with the broader economy through linkages with other sectors, output multipliers, employment multipliers…
read more >>The Job-Creating Potential of the Metered Taxi Industry in South Africa’s Urban Areas: Some Preliminary Findings
One of the aims of the Human Sciences Research Council’s Employment Growth and Development Initiative is to analyse economic diversification and identify potential future growth sectors, based on their growth potential and labour absorption capacity. One possible candidate is considered here – the metered taxi sector, which fits both these criteria well. This proposal provides…
read more >>Leveraging Services for Growth, Employment and Equity: Services Trade Reform in the South African Economy: What Does it Mean for Growth and Welfare?
Cassim reviews the theoretical literature on the impact of services trade liberalisation on efficiency, welfare and growth. The objective is to assess its implications for services trade reform in the South African context. In view of data limitations, this paper draws insights from the theoretical and international literature and assesses its relevance to South Africa….
read more >>Leveraging Services for Growth, Employment & Equity. Project Overview
Services account for the majority of employment creation globally. Yet economic policy often treats service sectors as a residual consideration in their growth and employment strategies. The HSRC supported the cluster of South African economic departments to frame explicit strategies towards the services sectors. This report was an early contribution, to offer a framework for…
read more >>Manufacturing Exports and Employment Growth
Davies considers the role of manufacturing exports in creating employment. It looks at the potential and limitations of the sector itself, and also its interaction with other sectors. He assesses where export growth might occur, and the contribution of different sectors to such growth, given their labour intensity, backward and forward linkages, and export dependence….
read more >>Employment Scenarios to 2014 & 2024 in the Context of a Global Meltdown
The 2007 Human Sciences Research Council employment scenarios are updated in this paper, taking into account the possible impact of the global economic crisis on employment and poverty. Altman puts forward three employment scenarios, projecting economic growth rates averaging 2.5% (L-shaped recovery), 3.3% (U-shaped recovery) and 4.5% (V-shaped recovery) between 2004 and 2014. They all…
read more >>The Implications of the Global Economic Crisis for Industrial Sectors in South Africa
Throughout 2008 it seemed that the effects of the growing global financial crisis were largely passing South Africa by. By comparison with many developed countries, its financial sector and to a large extent its economy remained strong. However, from the start of 2009, the second-round effects began to affect the economy, through substantially reduced international…
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