Africa’s food security under fire amid the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate an already dire situation of food shortage in some African countries. Professor Mzukisi Qobo (Head of Wits School of Governance, University of Witwatersrand), Isaah Mhlanga (Chief Economist at Alexander Forbes) and I have an essay...
Some positive developments in the global wheat market
We have previously warned of the restrictions placed by countries on agricultural commodity exports, specifically rice and wheat. The concern was that restrictions in the world’s larger supplier markets would inevitably result in drastic price increases of the...New data as Stats SA speeds up the monitoring of consumer prices
Since the beginning of the lockdown, the good folks at Statistics South Africa have been measuring price changes for essential goods that appear in the Consumer Price Index and temporarily publishing inflation data weekly for a smaller range of goods. Taking a closer...New data out of Stats SA on Business impact survey of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa
The actual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on South African businesses remains unknown until critical variables to measure it can be identified, including the duration of the pandemic and its intensity in terms of infection rates. So far, the pandemic has highlighted...
Lower export demand will be among SA agriculture’s COVID-19 challenges
This essay first appeared on Business Day, April 14, 2020 The potential rise in oil prices and weak demand for SA’s agricultural exports from most regions are two additional challenges for the agricultural sector that are spinning off the COVID-19 pandemic. Global oil...Agriculture After the Pandemic
I’ve published an essay — Agriculture After the Pandemic — on Project Syndicate, the World’s Opinion Page. You can access it here. Follow me on Twitter (@WandileSihlobo). E-mail: wandile@agbiz.co.za
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.