The poor service delivery by municipalities is driving business away and leading to ghost towns. We have recently learned of a similar situation with Clover leaving Lichtenburg because of poor service delivery by municipal officials. This challenge is not unique to Lichtenburg but familiar across many towns across South Africa.
South Africa’s agricultural sector has not, in the recent past, had a season as good as the current one. This is evident from the Agbiz/IDC Agribusiness Confidence Index (ACI), which in the second quarter of this year reached a record high (since its inception in 2001) of 75, from 64 in the first quarter of 2021.
This week I joined The Finance Ghost and Mohammed Nalla (Moe-Knows) to discuss the investment opportunity in the South African agricultural sector.
I recently sat down with Ms Mbali Nwoko for wide-ranging conservation about South Africa’s agricultural economy, policy, career, writing and more.
CNN International investigated the untapped potential of agriculture in Africa in its regular series Connecting Africa.
Policymakers and senior government officials should remember that effective communication is not “a nice to do” but an integral part of policy-making.
The Beneficiary Selection Criteria for land reform that were first suggested by the Presidential Advisory Panel on land reform is a first step in ensuring gender diversity. The policy proposes that the government should have a bias towards women and youth in its land reform process. In the 700 000 hectares of land that the government is in the process of releasing, we will be able to judge if women and youth are genuinely prioritized.
This week I participated in two podcast series; (1) on the Financial Mail and (2) on Earth Cast. In both sessions, we discussed various aspects of South Africa’s agriculture, land reform and rural development.
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“.
He is a Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand.
Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 (and re-appointed in 2022), having served on the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture from 2018.
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, The Herald and Farmers Weekly magazine.
His weekly podcast, “Agricultural Market Viewpoint with Wandile Sihlobo“, is available on all podcast platforms.
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.