The Impact of Transport Pricing Practices in South Africa on Freight Transport Costs
Freight transport cost is one of the core factors that determine product prices, and it has a direct impact on the competitive advantage of South African goods in local and international markets. Inefficiencies in the transport sector, which lead to high freight transport cost, can restrict economic growth and job creation. It is therefore important…
read more >>Prices, Investment and Efficiency on the Railways: A Sectoral Review of Efficiencies in Administered Pricing in South Africa
There has been little change to the operational structure of the South African rail industry over the past century. It remains a state-owned monopoly, run as a division of the same entity that houses the ports. Despite attempts to introduce greater commercial discipline in the 1980s, the industry is still only intermittently profitable and seems…
read more >>Administered Prices Study on Economic Inputs: Ports
Improvements to the competitiveness of commercial transport systems in South Africa will significantly boost economic and employment growth, given the high concentration of economic activity on the inland plateau, the sensitivity of foreign trade to freight cost, and the distance to market of South Africa’s major trading partners. Transport is largely shaped by government, through…
read more >>Potential Job Creation in the South African ICT Sector
Lowitt analyses potential job creation in ICT. She provides a demand-side analysis of ICT and broadband, using four categories of demand: private consumption (individuals), private investment (large and small firms), government demand, and trade demand (sale of ICT-enabled services). The ICT sector is dealt with as a separate sector, whose size depends on demand from…
read more >>Broadband for South Africa: Capital Investment and Policy Dimensions
Kleeman assesses the investments required to achieve 100% broadband coverage. He uses case studies of Malaysia, Brazil, Korea, Ghana and Kenya. Kleeman sets out the investment required for national broadband, alternative forms of access, the potential role of government, and different investment models. This report is part of the Vision 2020 process of the Department of…
read more >>Vision 2020 ICT Investment Executive Summary
This report is part of the Vision 2020 process of the Department of Communications. It focuses on how to achieve investment towards 100% broadband and how to optimise job creation impacts. It assessed the supply side (infrastructure investment) as well as the demand side (factors that increase data use). The country case studies helped to…
read more >>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 >>ICT investment & jobs – Country case studies
South Africa’s aspiration for 2020 is to achieve 100% broadband coverage, while maximising both economic and employment growth. A number of paths can be followed to achieve this target: enabling digital citizens, supporting the industry, and building global leadership in ICT products and services. These dimensions are not sequential. For example, India was not a…
read more >>Cloud computing in South Africa: Prospects and Challenges
Cloud computing is scalable, on-demand provision of remote computing and data storage. Its dramatic growth is captured in a 2011 study that predicted that by 2014, over 60% of the world’s server workloads would take place on virtualised cloud servers, up from 8% five years earlier. This growth stems from the cloud’s advantages of scale…
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