Industrial Policy in Context: An Overview of NIPF and IPAPs

This policy brief provides a summary of nine Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs) published from 2007 to 2018. The National Industrial Policy Framework (NIPF) set out the strategic direction for South Africa’s industrialisation. The NIPF was a framework for  IPAPs, aiming to support labour-absorbing and value-adding industries while shifting from commodities reliance and promoting inclusivity of historically disadvantaged people. IPAPs were annual strategies that set out specific actions for priority industries, particularly in the manufacturing sector.

The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition replaced IPAPs with Master Plans in 2019 to drive the country’s industrialisation, highlighting three reasons for the shift towards Master Plans: to create platforms to engage with industry stakeholders to implement industry support measures; to pivot resources and capacity by scaling a few priority industries that would have a positive socioeconomic impact; and to co-ordinate government across departments and entities to implement industrial policy.

Multiple manufacturing industries were prioritised in the nine IPAPs, with eight industries consistently prioritised over IPAP iterations. Prioritising multiple industries in IPAPs limited the focus on labour-intensive and scalable industries envisioned by the NIPF. This brief looks at the performance of priority industries, noting that the outcomes of the different industries varied significantly. In most cases, they did not reach key targets for growth and localisation, although arguably the results would have been worse in the absence of industrial policy measures.