The quiet erosion: What has happened to subsistence farming in South Africa?
There is a gradual decline in households engaged in subsistence agriculture. What does this mean for food security and for households’ wellbeing?
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Accessible, evidence-based analysis on growth and inclusive development in South Africa.
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From fragility to resilience: The emerging market journey
In many ways, South Africa is a textbook example of a resilient emerging market, but the country still faces the “silent crisis” of tepid growth. This is caused not by macro-economic policy but by the institutional failure brought on by state capture.
Promises and limits: What the SRD grant tells us about cash transfers in constrained labour markets
How effective are cash transfers in improving labour market outcomes in contexts where jobs are scarce and barriers to self-employment high? We examine the effects of South Africa's Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant – a small, unconditional cash transfer targeting the unemployed – and find that it increases job search and employment without discouraging work, at least on average. However, in a labour market as structurally constrained as South Africa's, these gains are modest and short-lived, pointing to the need for complementary reforms that go beyond income support alone.
Operation Vulindlela: Opening the road
Operation Vulindlela is a joint delivery unit of the Presidency and the National Treasury, established in 2020 to implement a limited set of reforms identified in a 2019 National Treasury growth paper. Its first phase covered electricity generation licensing, water-use licences, work visas, freight rail and ports, and telecommunications. A second phase extends to metro rail, municipal water services, local government finances and digital government. This article sets out what each of those reforms involved, and where the programme now stands.
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The economy we are waiting for may never arrive: we need to imagine new paths to development
South Africa’s development challenge is not only economic; it is also one of imagination. We need to find new areas where growth, innovation, and opportunity can thrive.
Is it time to abolish the PIC?
Confronted with irreconcilable differences between the previous board and the CEO of the PIC, its governance arrangements have again come under the spotlight. But the idea that an “independent” rather than a deputy minister as chair of the PIC would solve the problem is to confuse symptoms for the underlying malaise. It is the investment mandate that matters. The National Treasury and the GEPF should take charge, with fiscal sustainability and long-run growth as the overriding imperatives. Governance reforms might help, but a better strategy would be to abolish the PIC altogether.
Flawed methods lead to dangerous conclusions on SRD lifeline
This article critiques two 2026 academic papers that argue that the Covid-19 SRD grant led to reductions in household income and expenditure and food security. We show that a failure to understand the design of the grant led to flawed methods and incorrect interpretation of results. The authors conclude that cash transfer programmes can have negative “unintended consequences”, when in fact their results show that the grant is overwhelmingly received by income-insecure households, but that its value is too low to adequately alleviate food insecurity.
Sweet smell of success: how South Africa overtook Spain as the world's largest citrus exporter by volume
Last year, South Africa overtook Spain to become the world’s largest exporter of citrus. It marked a turning point in the world’s citrus industry and in the country’s focus on high-value agricultural exports. What has driven this move, and what challenges does the sector face today?
How tariffs on manufacturing affect employment in the services sector
South Africa faces unemployment and deindustrialisation. Manufacturing tariff cuts in the 1990s were expected to reallocate workers into services. Our research finds the opposite: municipalities with larger tariff cuts experienced weaker employment growth in manufacturing and services. Wages did not adjust – the shock was absorbed through job losses. Negative spillovers from manufacturing constrained services from absorbing displaced workers; they either exited the labour force or migrated to other municipalities.
Rethinking title deeds in former homelands: what do households want?
In significant parts of rural South Africa, people occupy land not through formal title deeds but through a system of land allocation rooted in the apartheid and pre-apartheid eras. Would formal title deeds improve economic wellbeing and promote investment? Perhaps. But in a survey of rural dwellers in seven former homelands, most residents said they did not want this.
Why we should count our chickens
South Africa has 168 million chickens. What does their location tell us about food security and the resilience of this key agricultural sub-sector?
The urban housing market has shifted: now policy must follow
As urbanisation increases, South Africa’s cities face a housing shortfall of 2.2 million units. The traditional supply-driven model of large-scale, peripheral developments has often resulted in poor value for money and high transport costs. However, high demand for low-cost housing is driving a burgeoning market in well-located backyard apartments and small-scale rentals. These high-density developments offer economic returns and well-located housing. How must policy be reimagined to support this demand-led, "lots of small" approach and leverage the value of cities for inclusive growth?
How the legacy of apartheid geography shapes housing wealth
Housing wealth accounts for up to 65% of the total assets of the average South African household, yet its potential to reduce inequality is reduced by the persistent "stickiness" of apartheid geography. Using 2008-2017 data, the authors find that over 90% of individuals from marginalised groups remain in areas historically designated for their race, and even those who move to formal urban centres face returns that are deeply stratified by race. As the absolute gap in housing wealth between white and African urban residents continues to widen, the research highlights the emergence of "spatial traps"—where state-provided housing offers physical shelter but fails as a wealth-building asset.
Stuck at the start, 50 years on: Youth unemployment and exclusion in a low-growth, unequal, changing economy
On June 16, 1976, thousands of school students in Soweto took to the streets to protest against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. But the grievances were far more deeply rooted: they were essentialy about inferior education and economic exclusion. Today, 50 years on, many young people still battle exclusion in spite of better education opportunities. And racial inequalities persist, as even those with education struggle to find meaningful jobs.