Presenter:

John Ledger completed a B.Sc. Honours degree in Zoology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1965 and thereafter worked at the South African Institute for Medical Research as a research scientist in the Department of Medical Entomology.

He spent 18 years at the SAIMR, completing his Doctorate at the School of Pathology and becoming Head of Department.

In 1985 John was appointed as Director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust. He grew this organization from 3 people to one of the leading conservation NGOs in Southern Africa.

He retired in 2002 to pursue his numerous other interests. He still edits the EWT's Vision magazine and its Vision annual book. He is Content Editor of African Wildlife, the journal of the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa.

John is Chairperson of the Sustainable Energy Society of Southern Africa (SESSA) and has business interests in solar water heating (see http://on-sunsolar.com/). He is a Non-Executive Director on the Board of the Johannesburg Zoo, a member of the Panel of Environmental Experts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a Consultant to the Lesotho Biodiversity Trust and a member of the Advisory Board of the Mazda Wildlife Fund since it was launched in 1990. He is a Visiting Associate Professor at Wits University and lectures on renewable energy and energy efficiency for the M.Sc course in Environmental Science.

Presenter:

Tony Hawkins was founder-director of the Graduate School of Management (GSM) at the University of Zimbabwe and now Professor of Economics at the GSM. He is a consultant for an international bank and writes widely on African economic issues.

Presenter:

Sandy Lowitt obtained a Baccalaur ©at International in Geneva and went on to complete a Master of Commerce (MCom) degree in economics at the University of the Witwatersrand. She taught Economics at Wits University until 1994 when she joined the Gauteng Department of Finance and Economic Affairs. She still lectures part-time at Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS).

In her 11 years in the Gauteng government, Sandy was responsible for the development and maintenance of a provincial economic database, the drafting of the provincial Trade and Industrial Strategy, the development of various agencies such as Gauteng Economic Development Agency (GEDA) and Gauteng Tourism Authority (GTA), negotiating international economic agreements between the province and its counterparts, and the creation and operation of the province's strategic economic infrastructure programme, Blue IQ.

As the CEO of Blue IQ Holdings and as the strategic operating officer of Blue IQ, Sandy was on the board of directors of seven of Blue IQ's subsidiary companies. She chaired, for instance, the Board of the Innovation Hub, that of the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), that of the Automotive Supplier Park and that of the Newtown Development Company.

In 2005 Sandy left the Gauteng government and became a consultant. She has been working with the Economic Development and Growth Initiative (EDGI) at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) since 2005, focusing on sectoral studies and industrial policy issues. During this period she has also worked with various government departments, research organisations and donor programmes.

The seminar will be chaired by Professor Mike Morris [BA (UCT) BA Hons (UCT) MA (Sussex) PhD (Sussex)]

Visiting Professor and Principal Researcher, School of Economics, University of Cape Town and Research Professor, School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Professor Morris has a long engagement in policy oriented research, working with government, and assisting firms and industries. He has assisted the South African Department of Trade and Industry, the provincial governments of KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and Northern Province with industrial policy work. He has also worked with the International Trade Centre (Geneva) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Vienna). He has undertaken research and policy work for a number of international agencies including the European Union (EU), Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), DANSET, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC).

He has published widely in the areas of globalization, the impact of Asian Drivers on Africa, global value chains and international competitiveness, industrial development and policy, clusters and learning networks, sectors and innovation, and economic development. He is also director of a company (Benchmarking and Manufacturing Analysts) which assists firms and government with upgrading, competitiveness and industrial strategies. He currently Heads a networking project, PRISM (Policy Research in International Services and Manufacturing) in the School of Economics at UCT.

19 June 2008

The Think Tank Initiative invites applications from independent African organisations that are committed to using research to inform and influence social and economic policy. The Initiative will provide multi-year funding to promising think tanks, and will work with successful applicants to improve their organizational performance.

For more details on the Initiative and the application process, visit The Think Tank.
Deadline: August 19, 2008

The Think Tank Initiative is a new, multi-donor programme dedicated to strengthening 'independent policy research institutions“' or 'œthink tanks' in developing countries, enabling them to better provide sound research that both informs and influences policy.

The Initiative will focus its activities in East and West Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

First international conference on regional integration issues and SADC law

Premi�Ã�ƒ�Â�©re conf�Ã�ƒ�Â�©rence internationale sur les questions de l'int�Ã�ƒ�Â�©gration r�Ã�ƒ�Â�©gionale et le droit de la SADC

Centro internacional de confr�Ã�ƒ�Â�©ncia Joaquim Chissano.

Universidade Eduardo Mondlane

The 2008 Forum was held in partnership with the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism and The Competitiveness Institute (TCI).

TCI's Conference was entitled: Clusters Meeting the Challenge of Globalisation

Forum Theme:

After a number of years of strong economic growth and relative macroeconomic stability, the South African economy now seems to be facing an especially uncertain outlook. The catalyst for the uncertain outlook may have been international developments, but domestic policy failures appear to have played no small part in guiding the South African economy to the brink of a substantial slowdown, with a significant risk of stagflation in the future.

Some commentators have argued that the positive international environment has allowed the domestic economy to grow rapidly but without many of the structural impediments to growth being addressed. In some senses, economic policy has been a victim of the economy's success, as difficult economic policy decisions and trade-offs could be postponed – in specific cases almost indefinitely.
However, some of the structural flaws are now becoming visible:

• Largely unchanged trading patterns, with strong capital good imports and resource-intensive exports.
• Balance of payments constraints, especially a dependence on portfolio capital inflows.
• Macroeconomic policy with a heavy focus on cyclical fiscal policy and blunt monetary policy instruments to deal with rising consumer spending and inflation.
• Uncompetitive and still highly concentrated manufacturing sectors with limited export and employment potential.
• Misalignment of factor markets such as the skills, technology, land and capital markets.
• Key failures in utility industries such as telecoms, water and energy.

With national elections set to take place in 2009 and a new Administration to take office thereafter, it is timely to open the debate on what South Africa's overarching economic policy may look like over the next decade. Predictably, wholesale changes are said to be unlikely but clearly a change in emphasis to the Left is being envisaged. Whether such a shift materialises, the extent of the shift and its likely impact, however, remain open questions. The opening salvo of what is likely to be a robust national debate has already been fired, with South Africa's National Treasury releasing the findings of the Harvard Panel.

The TIPS Forum 2008 therefore seeked to catalyse debate on what the policy focus, balance of emphasis and programmes of a new phase of economic policy could comprise. Key themes were:

• South Africa's overarching economic policy direction – successes and failures
• Macroeconomic policy
• Trade and industrial policy
• A National Anti-Poverty Strategy – form, content and objectives
• Agricultural policy and land reform
• Spatial planning for industrial policy
• The 'Second Economy' and policy responses (TIPS will also be hosting a dedicated 'Second Economy' Conference in September 2008)
• Infrastructure investment-led growth – implications thereof
• HIV/AIDS – implications for the labour market and impact on poverty levels
• Poverty and inequality
• Xenophobia – root causes, labour market impact, implications for regional economic relations and the effect on social fabric.

As has become the norm, the TIPS Forum 2008 provided the setting for policy and research communities to debate these key issues in an unfettered and robust manner.

See Annual Forum papers

Presenter: 

Victor Tokman is an economic advisor to the President of Chile, based in Santiago. He has a doctorate degree in economics from Oxford University, an MA in Development Studies from the University of Chile and a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) degree from the University of Rosario in Argentina. He has also received Doctorates Honoris Causa from the University of Rosario and from the Pontifical Catholic University in Peru. He also obtained the Rector Medal from the University of Chile.

Victor Tokman served, until June 2005, as the Assistant Director General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and as the ILO's Regional Director for the Americas. He has worked with the ILO for 28 years, previously as Director of the Employment Development Department in Geneva and Director of the Regional Employment Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean (PREALC) in Santiago.

Victor has taught at the University of Chile and the Catholic University of Chile. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Sussex and at the Economic Growth Center of Yale University.

He is recognised worldwide as one of the leading experts on informal sector issues. He has written numerous papers and books on this subject as well as on poverty and employment issues.

Reducing Exchange Rate Volatility and Supporting Competitiveness

Co-ordinators

Prof. Dr. E. Schaling

Prof. Dr. E. Schaling studied macroeconomics at the Faculty of Economic and Business Administration at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, currently Europe's number one faculty in terms of research output.

After obtaining his doctorate at the same university with a thesis entitled 'Institutions and Monetary Policy: Credibility, Flexibility and Central Bank Independence', he joined the Monetary Analysis Division of the Bank of England. In 1998 he moved to South Africa and became full Professor of Economics at the University of Johannesburg.

He has been a consultant to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the Dutch Central Bank, the Bank of Finland and the European Central Bank. He is a fellow at the Center for Economic Research at Tilburg University and at the Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis, University of St. Andrews in the UK. In South Africa he has been an adviser to the National Treasury, to the South African Reserve Bank, to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Finance, the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) and to the Presidency.

Dr. Schaling was appointed, in 2007, South African Reserve Bank Chair at the University of Pretoria.

Nicola Viegi

Nicola Viegi is an Associate Professor in economics at the University of Cape Town. A graduate from the Scottish Doctoral Programme in Economics, he has been a lecturer in economics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, invited lecturer at the University of Malta and the Ecole Superior de Commerce in Toulouse and is currently Visiting Scholar at De Nederlandsche Bank . He studied economics at the University of Pisa in Italy. Before UCT, he was a senior lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

His main areas of research are economic policy theory, macroeconomic modelling and regional macroeconomic integration. Current research includes inflation targeting under uncertainty, monetary policy and asset prices, and macroeconomic integration in Southern Africa.