There’s no need to reinvent the wheel to boost growth in South Africa’s agriculture
This essay first appeared on Fin24, June 15, 2020 The South African agriculture sector has the potential to be amongst the sectors that will drive economic growth and job creation during the post-COVID-19 recovery phrase. The path to realise this growth does not need...
SA and Zambia able to replace global producers’ maize exports to neighbours
This essay first appeared on Business Day, June 9, 2020 Some countries in the Southern and East Africa regions will again need large imports of maize in the 2020/2021 marketing year, which ends in April 2021. However, their saviours won’t be your typical major global...
SA agricultural trade surplus expands by 16% y/y in the first quarter of 2020
The ongoing Covid-19 crisis has brought uncertainty to global trade because of disruptions in supply chains and weakening demand. South Africa’s agricultural sector, which is export-oriented, is one of the sectors I feared would be disrupted by the pandemic. So...
Large global grains supply
I’ve recently cautioned that dryness in parts of Europe and North America could lead to poor grain yields, which would mean that anticipated record harvests in 2020/21 might fail to materialise. But data released by the International Grains Council (IGC) last week...
How long can the status quo in the global food system hold?
Essay by Wandile Sihlobo and Tinashe Kapuya[i] As countries continue to implement “risk-adjusted” responses to COVID-19 and global leaders and analysts alike continue to assess the evolving implications of the pandemic on global markets. What makes COVID-19 unique is...
Higher seasonal output will not sustain sales of agricultural machinery
This essay first appeared on Business Day, May 12, 2020 No industry will escape the economic pain of the Covid-19 pandemic. The high-frequency economic data for industries that are classified as non-essential during the lockdown period already shows the negative...
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.