This paper is a shortened version of a 'think-piece' prepared as a contribution to the dialogue at the 2018 Kigali meeting of the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Network. Its purpose is to highlight both challenges and emerging practices in mobilising local governments, and other stakeholders, including those in other spheres of government and the private sector, towards advancing the scale and scope of local economic development outcomes around critical dimensions of inclusion. The paper is not intended to be an exhaustive report covering all the aspects of contemporary local economic development approaches, but rather to offer selective insights that might contribute to deepening relevant policy and implementation processes in an increasingly urban world.
This paper is a shortened version of a 'think-piece' prepared as a contribution to the dialogue at the 2018 Kigali meeting of the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Network. Its purpose is to highlight both challenges and emerging practices in mobilising local governments, and other stakeholders, including those in other spheres of government and the private sector, towards advancing the scale and scope of local economic development outcomes around critical dimensions of inclusion. The paper is not intended to be an exhaustive report covering all the aspects of contemporary local economic development approaches, but rather to offer selective insights that might contribute to deepening relevant policy and implementation processes in an increasingly urban world.
This report investigates in what way the provision and management of infrastructure (or shortcomings therein) has constrained or enabled mining investment and local firm linkages to this mining activity (with a primary focus on the recent experience on Tanzania?s Central Development Corridor and the Zambezi Valley in Mozambique).? The usefulness of the development corridor approach to enhance the scope for linked small enterprise development and more diversified economic development is explored in the context of increased minerals investment. The points of focus in the research demonstrate an awareness of the need to break away from the so-called "enclave" model of resource extraction that characterized Africa?s colonial past where infrastructure developed primarily to serve narrow interests and objectives of those seeking to exploit the continent?s resources.? For governments and other stakeholders managing the complexities associated with configuring and timing large-scale infrastructure investments to enable much needed foreign direct investment, the development corridor approach has been suggested as one which might offer scope for balancing the needs of large scale, largely foreign, investors with those of wider domestic economic and social interests. The study findings point to a variety of factors that have made the necessary coordination by different stakeholders hard to achieve: at best a process with limited and incremental gains in Tanzania but one with a higher degree of measured progress in Mozambique. By adopting progressive policies and creative solutions to the delivery of infrastructure upgrades in the Zambezi Valley, it appears that the prospects for leveraging mineral investments to enable diversified economic development have been enhanced. On the Central Development Corridor, the continuing dysfunctionality of much of the corridor infrastructure continues to constrain "anchor" mineral investments, wider domestic business growth and the appetite for greater local procurement by the mining companies. Issues associated with mining of different commodity types, political will and forms of regional collaboration and their impact on the potential utility of the development corridor approach are also discussed.?
In: Morris , M , Robbins , G , Hansen , U E & Nygaard , I 2020 ' Energy and Industrial Policy Failure in the South African Wind Renewable Energy Global Value Chain: The political economy dynamics driving a stuttering localisation process ' Policy Research on International Services and Manufacturing, University of Cape Town , Cape Town .
This paper utilises a combination of a political economy approach and a GVC framework to analyse the dynamics of the wind energy value chain in South Africa. The paper focuses on the complex intertwined interplay between energy and industrial policy and shows how they negatively impacted on efforts to increase localisation of domestic manufacturing and services industries. It discusses the opportunities and constraints, success and failures of a localisation process contained arising from the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP). It finds that early modest industrialisation gains, linked to the local content requirements in the REIPPP auctions, notwithstanding the policy shortcomings, did have a notable localisation impact but fell short of the ambition in broader policy documents. Nonetheless, these signs of progress from foreign lead firms, large global 1st tier suppliers, and local firms, were substantially undermined, in some cases reversed, as a consequence of the political choices to suspend the renewable energy programme. It shows how political economy dynamics resulted in a failure to ensure continuity and predictability of the auction bidding process within REIPPPP, and how this cascaded down the wind energy value chain constraining the initial localisation processes. These dynamics also resulted in a failure of the South African government to prioritise, develop, and embed renewable energy within its industrial policy framework. As the economy emerges from the Covid-19 crisis this will pose political economy challenges as coalitions of South African stakeholders struggle over the task of breaking from a carbon intensive path dependency and inaugurating a new green industrialisation path.
