South Africa is still dry!
It is a cloudy and humid afternoon in Nairobi. I am currently sitting in a small coffee shop at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, in transit to Zanzibar where I will be participating in a conference about unlocking Africa’s agricultural potential through land...
Kenyans can celebrate food price relief, but they are not out of the woods
Celebrations were in order when Kenya recovered from the 2017 drought, when food price inflation was at double digits, causing political tension during the general election. However, while food price inflation eased from double digits in 2017 to 0.5% year on year in...
Partnerships Key to Boosting the Eastern Cape’s Agricultural Economy
WEEKEND ESSAY It was almost 9 on a sunny Tuesday morning as I walked out of the arrival terminal at the East London airport. I was greeted with a smile by Felix Hobson, a senior agricultural practitioner at the Eastern Cape’s Department of Rural Development and...
The Promise of the Eastern Cape’s Cannabis-belt?
Tomorrow (November 20) I will participate in a roundtable discussion in East London, organised by the Provincial Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform. My focus area will be to provide a brief update on South Africa’s agricultural economy with a key...
Perspectives on Farm Sizes
The growing need to boost rural economic activity through agricultural development has re-introduced the discussion on the subdivision of land to create as many small farms as possible that will benefit communities in South Africa. Some agricultural economists (myself...
No American Eggs In your Breakfast Yet?
Three months back the United States Department of Agriculture published a note indicating that South Africa has officially opened its market for imports of shell eggs from the US. You see, South Africa is typically self-sufficient in eggs. For example, in the past 17...
Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and the author of “Finding Common Ground: Land, Equity, and Agriculture.”
Sihlobo is Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University.
He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Fort Hare and a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from Stellenbosch University.
Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 after serving on the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture between 2018 and 2019.
He is also a member of the Council of Statistics of South Africa (Stats SA) and a Commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC).
Sihlobo is a columnist for Business Day and Farmers Weekly magazine.