Past Projects
Second Economy Strategy Project
In the face of a long-standing unemployment crisis that increasingly threatens social and economic stability, employment has at last taken centre stage in South African policy, and with this, a focus on the structural constraints on employment creation within the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
13 August 2012
Inequality, unemployment and poverty in South Africa
Unemployment and earnings inequality in South Africa have declined in recent years, while the trend in overall income inequality is unclear. Inequality and unemployment both remain at extremely high levels by historical and international standards. There has been a very…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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18 November 2011
Mediating from the margins: The role of intermediaries in facilitating participation in formal markets by poor producers and users
Patrick Sathorar acts as a marketing consultant for a group of 25-30 HIV-positive women in Nyanga, Cape Town. They produce textile and beaded products and Patrick facilitates their participation in the formal market by sourcing and negotiating contracts for them.…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
15 November 2011
Linking small marginalised producers to modern markets: Are we trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?
Improving small, marginalised producers access to modern markets has increasingly been accepted as an important element in South African policy debates on improving the employment, income and livelihood opportunities for such producers. The importance of market access arises because in…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 November 2011
Identifying appropriate interventions to support the transition from schooling to the workplace
Youth unemployment is extremely high in South Africa, approximately double the national rate. While this is not uncommon internationally, it poses a special problem in South Africa where at least half of young school leavers are unlikely to find work…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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21 August 2011
Asset inequality
The promise of asset-based approaches to poverty, as well as its limitations can be summarised with reference to the popular idiom: “teach a person to fish, rather than giving him a fish”. If the idiom were a development programme or…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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This case study provides a comparative analysis of two different initiatives designed to promote the smallholder sector in metropolitan Cape Town. The City of Cape Town has developed an urban agriculture policy and initiated a joint venture between itself, the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
Street trading is the most common type of informal self-employment activity in South Africa. Traders sell a range of products such as fruits and vegetables, cooked food, new and used clothing, cosmetics, footwear, dvds, “public” telephone services and mobile phone…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
Agriculture plays a unique and multifaceted role in the South African economy. While it contributes less than three percent to the country’s GDP, it provides almost 10 percent of the country’s formal sector employment. The sector has, according to all…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
Within the ambit of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa, government is leading a process to define a Second Economy Strategy. One of the opportunities that has been identified is the agricultural sector, in particular fostering a…
17 April 2009
Employment Intermediation for Unskilled and Low-skilled Work Seekers - Part 1: Overview of the Sector
Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges facing South Africa. Growth has been inadequate, the skills level requirement of new jobs is continually rising, current skills among the workforce are low and inadequate numbers of low end, unskilled jobs are…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
In discussing the relationship between governance and inclusivity this paper’s central argument is that unless there is an ability to build a responsive government at all spheres than there is no connection between the two. The ability of the state…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 April 2009
Income and non-income inequality in post-apartheid South Africa: What are the drivers and possible policy interventions?
South Africa has historically been ranked as one of the most unequal societies in the world, and while the country has experienced sustained positive economic growth since 1994, the impact of this growth on poverty, and particularly inequality, has been…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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The research and policy proposals from the process of reviewing the performance of existing government programmes targeting the second economy and developing an expanded strategy were presented to a 'Work in Progress' workshop in May 2008 and to a conference…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 February 2009
Understanding inequality: Promoting equity
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) a third of the global workforce is either unemployed or underemployed barely eking out a living through informal work; selfemployment or as wage workers involved in precarious employment. International competitive pressures have led…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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The paper argues for a broad based access to property, broader than access to title allows, with the potential for wider, quicker and more sustained reach. It motivates for a place for tenure security in the second economy strategy as…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
The task is to reflect on the building of the second economy in small and medium sized towns. This involves a review of secondary sources, as well as an input on quantitative measures to support the main arguments. The paper…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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11 November 2008
The Review of Second economy Programmes: An Overview for the Presidency's Fifteen Year Review
At the July 2007 Cabinet lekgotla, the Presidency was tasked with conducting a review of existing government programmes that target the 'second economy', in order to identify where programmes can be scaled up to achieve greater impacts, and where further…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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South Africa is continuing to urbanise, perhaps not as rapidly as some developing countries but certainly at a rate which has generated a considerable degree of policy anguish over its accompanying rising levels of urban poverty. The Presidency of the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 November 2008
Making Markets work for People and the Environment: Employment Creation from Payment for Eco-Systems Services
We conducted a partial sectoral analysis of the market for ecosystem goods and services in SouthAfrica by doing the following: We mapped the areas of high eco system productivity and poverty. By overlaying the two datasets, we identified the priority…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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This report is based on work undertaken towards developing the urban component of a second economy strategy, as part of the Second Economy Project, an initiative of the Presidency. Within this project Urban LandMark (ULM) was appointed by Trade and…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 November 2008
Access to Services for Poor People in Urban Areas
This report provides an analytical reflection on the provision of infrastructure services in urban areas, with the aim of enhancing the access of the poor in urban areas to these services. It commences by considering what is meant by “access”…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
Conceptualising the second economy No detailed process will be followed in order to define the concept second economy’. The Second Economy Strategy Project (2008:2) probably summarises it best: “In sum, the concept of the ‘second economy’ is being used as…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
This paper unpacks from a spatial perspective, the duality of urban contexts in South Africa that is of unprecedented opulence on the one hand and remarkable deprivation on the other, as stated by Sen (1999: xi). Although focused on the…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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This document is part two of a three part report on employment intermediation. Part one provides an overview of the sector, internationally and nationally, and part three captures the recommendations for further work towards strengthening the sector. In this second…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
Local labour placement project: Overstrand Municipality
The Local Labour Promotion Project (hereafter LLPP) has been developed internally within the Overstrand Municipality which is situated in the Overberg District of the Western Cape Province. The LLPP was developed initially in 2005 to deal with the high level…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
Business health check: Western Cape Bus Operators’ Transport Co-operative Ltd (Siyakhula)
Siyakhula, or the Western Cape Bus Operators’ Transport Cooperative Ltd, operates within the bus sector of the transport industry. A brief description of the sector follows in order to contextualise the operations of the cooperative. The transport, storage and communications…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges facing South Africa. Growth has been inadequate, the skills level requirement of new jobs is continually rising, current skills among the workforce are low and inadequate numbers of low end, unskilled jobs are…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
Transport and the Urban Poor
The aim of the paper is to articulate necessary state interventions to improve transport services for the urban poor in South Africa. The paper forms part of a larger study intended to inform a strategic response to the challenges of…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
Emergency Relief in Informal Settlements: Proposals for Action
CONTEXT This document is a response to the aspiration of National Treasury to define practical mechanisms which will enable emergency relief for informal settlements and associated urban economy interventions to rapidly occur on a national basis. This aspiration flows largely…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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01 October 2008
The State of Land Use Management in South Africa
This paper contributes to the urban component of the forthcoming ‘second economy’1 strategy. The brief called for a reflection on the issue of urban land use management (LUM), and extraction of the implications for the urban poor. For the most…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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Presently, deep-sea vessels fishing Hake under-catch their annual allocation by nearly 10,000 tons and it is claimed that this is because there is no basis on which to target by-catch once the allowable Hake quota has been caught. The following…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 September 2008
Linking small and marginalised producers to external markets: New ideas for demand-side measures using value chain analysis
This executive summary is not presented in the usual manner of summarising the findings of each chapter of the report. The complexity and detail covered in the report, and the nuances in the debates, makes such an option impossible. Rather,…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
01 September 2008
Potential for a South African Aquaculture Industry on the Northern Cape's Namaqualand Coast
In the 1980s, aquaculture, or fish farming, was in its infancy, globally. Today, it accounts for close to 50 million tons annually, making up nearly half of all fish products consumed. Of this, Africa has a 1% market share and…
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Second Economy Strategy Project
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15 August 2008
Energy-based poverty indicators: Meeting AsgiSA targets
Since 1994 the South African government has identified poverty alleviation as a key policy goal. This objective was formulated under the auspices of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy which has arguably had limited success (Hassan, 2001). In 2004…
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Second Economy Strategy Project