Like many developing countries, South Africa faces a great development problem relating to the high failure rate that is present among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), this is due to the fact that entrepreneurs are not able to turn their businesses into sustainable venture. SMEs play a significant role is a number of economic development issues that face South Africa as a nation. The SME sector has contributed immensely to job creation, poverty alleviation and assisting in the prosperity of the nation. In addition to the above, SMEs are generally inexpensive to start and have the potential to generate massive economic growth in South Africa. Although the SME sector has many positive attributes, there are persisting challenges that plague South African SMEs. Fatoki and Garwe (2010) state that in the South African context, new SMES do not usually move from the existence stage, which is the first stage of growth, to the subsequent stages such as survival, success, take off and resources maturity. As such, it is believed that many of these SMEs do not survive in their first years of operation and thus, do not provide their benefits to society.

In many countries including Zambia, stock markets are perceived to be crucial for economic development because of the financial intermediary role that they have assumed in the financial system. Stock markets are sensitive to the arrival of new information, especially those that are macroeconomic like monetary policy announcements. This study sought to determine the extent to which the Lusaka Stock Exchange reacts to monetary policy actions by examining the response of all companies listed on the stock exchange to policy rate announcements, with the exception of ZCCM holdings. The study also aimed to look at the differential response of bank stock returns to policy rate announcements. In order to examine the impact of the policy rate announcement on the Lusaka Stock Exchange, the event study methodology was adopted to analyse data from January 2011 to June 2016. The data was collected from the LuSE daily trading reports and monetary policy publications from the Bank of Zambia. It was found that the policy rate announcement has an insignificant negative impact on stock prices in the event of a policy rate increase and an insignificant positive impact on stock prices when the policy rate is maintained. Similar findings were observed for bank stock prices and non-bank stock prices. The impact of the policy rate on stock prices has important implications for the monetary policy transmission mechanism, risk and investment management strategies of financial market participants, as well as government policy and actions towards financial markets. This study makes a unique contribution to existing literature because it is the only study in Zambia to have measured the impact of monetary policy on stock prices using the event study approach.

The average charges of officially transferring remittances from South Africa to other Southern African countries have been regarded as expensive compared to other main corridor of south-south remittance, and this has long been recognized as a major drain on the income of migrants and their households. Using data gathered across the SADC countries remittances corridors, this research explored the factors that account for the high costs of officially transferring remittances from South Africa to the SADC region. The average costs were regressed across all types of regulated financial institutions and money transfer operators with the following financial and macroeconomic variables: Real GDP per Capita, Dual exchange rates dummy, exchange rates, dollarization dummy, stock of migrants, volume of remittances, Exchange Control Restrictiveness Index, and the bank concentration. The study found that the main factors explaining the high costs of officially transferring remittances from South Africa to the SADC region were the bank concentration, exchange rate volatility, and the exchange control restrictiveness index. These findings suggest that the costs of officially transferring remittances from South Africa to the SADC region could be lowered by policies to increase competition among South African financial institutions and money transfer service providers, to reduce the country's exchange rate volatility, and to reduce the regulatory barriers that restrict financial services to migrants with non-South African identity documents.

To manage credit risk and improve working capital, many power utility companies have moved consumers from conventional post-payment for electricity to prepayment. Despite the growing use of this prepayment system, the welfare implications of this strategy are unclear and contested. The Zimbabwean utility company, Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), introduced prepaid meters in August 2012 and installed over 550,000 prepaid meters by the 31st of December 2015. This thesis' objective was to quantitatively assess the societal costs and benefits of introducing prepaid electricity to Zimbabwe, by calculating the net present value of the estimated annual costs and benefits over time. A qualitative analysis was also conducted, based on a consumer survey of 100 consumers who had switched from the post-paid to the prepaid system. The survey captured consumers' perceptions of the prepaid system's costs and benefits. Results of the study showed that both consumers and the utility company have benefited from the prepaid system. The average net benefit per user under the prepaid system was estimated at US$58.93 per annum. 74% of consumers surveyed confirmed having benefited from the switch to the prepaid system. The main policy recommendation, based on the results of the study, is for ZETDC to continue with its roll out of the prepaid system. However, as the research was limited to the current ZETDC prepaid consumer base of only domestic and small business users, a recommendation for future research would be to evaluate the costs and benefits for larger industrial consumers as well.

Most emerging markets are faced with the predicament of a misalignment, or mismatch, of assets and liabilities in the banking sector where long-term assets are funded by short-term deposits. The South African (SA) banking sector also faces a challenge regarding the composition of the short-term deposits that fund these assets. The large and unstable wholesale funds dominate the funding side of local banks' balance sheets, particularly in the short-term bucket. The danger with wholesale funds arises when they are withdrawn unexpectedly, due to either perceived or realised risk. Due to their bulk, the wholesale funds have the potential to create a funding liquidity risk crisis in a bank. Most banks are unlikely to match these types of withdrawals, and will therefore have a forced asset fire sale to fund them. Retail funds do not face this danger, as it is highly unlikely, in normal market conditions, which many retail depositors would want to withdraw all their funds at the same time. Furthermore, retail funds are a cheaper source of funding compared to wholesale funds, thus making them a bank's preferred source of funding. In as much as they are a preferred source of funding, in the SA banking system retail deposits are very low compared to wholesale funding. This research study explores the funding liquidity risk and the predicament that exists in the SA banking industry by highlighting its main sources, and providing recommendations on how it can be addressed. This is achieved by testing the relationship between the ratio of retail funding to total bank funding (ROBF) and five explanatory variables, namely: household saving rates; retail deposit rates; corporate saving rates; wholesale deposit rates; and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) All Share Index, with the aid of the multiple regression analysis method. The regression analysis was performed on data collected between 2002 and 2011. The research established that household saving rates and retail deposit rates were predictors that were statistically significant in explaining the movement in the ratio of retail funding to total funding.

This report examines the causal linkages between FDI, financial sector development, savings, remittances and economic growth in South Africa using annual time series data from 1970 to 2010. The results show that none of the financial sector variables directly lead to economic growth. However, economic growth is found to stimulate FDI and financial sector development. With regards to the causal linkages between the different financial factors, the results show that savings have highly significant causal linkages with FDI and financial sector development. In addition, the results suggest that savings have a moderately significant causal relationship with remittances. Furthermore, the results indicate that FDI has a weakly unidirectional causal relationship with financial sector development, and the direction of causality runs from FDI. The findings also suggest that remittances have a weakly significant relationship with FDI. Thus, these findings suggest that policy-makers in South Africa should aim principally at increasing domestic savings and economic growth rates since increasing domestic savings will significantly increase FDI, financial sector development and remittances, and increases in the economic growth rates will significantly increase financial sector development and FDI.

The government sector forms a significant part of the economy. As such, it is important to examine the impact of government activities on the economy. This study investigates the impact of several components of government expenditure on economic growth between 2001Q1 and 2014Q4 using the vector error correction model. The study found that only expenditure on transport and gross fixed capital formation had a significant positive impact on economic growth in the short-run. In the long-run, only expenditures on transport and education had a significant impact on economic growth. However, expenditure on health has a negative, although insignificant, impact on economic growth. This result may be due to the heavy concentration of health expenditure on disease treatment rather than disease preventive measures. Spending on defense has no significant impact on economic growth. Expenditure on agriculture was found to have no significant impact on economic growth both in the short- and long-run, partly due to a heavy concentration of expenditure on price-distorting agriculture input- and output-price support programs. The findings of the study suggest that there is need to focus expenditure on increasing agricultural productivity, improving the quality of education, improving road infrastructure and expanding disease prevention measures.

This paper reviews the causal connection between private investment; interest rates and macroeconomic uncertainty in South Africa on a yearly time series data range between 1980 and 2014. This research was encouraged by the continually weakening private investment in South Africa relative to total investment. There is a need to turn around this pattern. This research contributes towards a greater comprehension of the variables and their direction of impact in the examination of the pattern of private investments and additionally, the impacts of interest rate and macroeconomic uncertainty on private investment in SA. The study employs an ARDL model for co-integration to explore the presence of a long-run relationship between the variables and the granger causality within VECM to check the interrelations among the series. The findings reveal that all variables are co-integrated to suggest the existence of a long-run relationship among private investment, long-term interest rates and bond spread. The results show that macroeconomic uncertainty exerts an adverse influence on private investment, in accordance with economic theory. In contrast to the theory, the long-term interest rates coefficient is positive and significant in the projected equation. Therefore, the conclusion is that the interest rate contributes toward the reduction in private investment. Keeping in mind the end goal to resuscitate private investment, government ought to consider receiving approaches that lift total request, offering greater venture motivations, facilitating credit limitations by forming a more productive and vigorous money-related framework, decreasing macroeconomic vulnerabilities, encouraging foundation improvement, and empowering inflows of outside speculation.

Youth unemployment and crime is a serious problem in South Africa. Young people form the majority of the South African population (Barrar, 2010) and as future leaders and decision makers, it is vitally important to focus on youth and their future prospects. It is for this reason that this study examines youth development in the context of South Africa’s young democracy. This research explored the experiences of young people who had completed a skills training programme at the Chrysalis Academy in Cape Town. Chrysalis Academy is an initiative of the Western Cape Provincial Government. The programme was developed to address crime in poor communities as a preventative measure rather than a rehabilitative one; it aimed to provide skills training to youth to enable them to obtain employment in the hope of preventing their engagement with a life of crime, gangsterism, and drug and alcohol abuse.This study was based on a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive research design and therefore in depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 past students who had graduated from the academy within the past five years. The findings of the research showed that the Chrysalis programme was unique in many respects. Its approach and subject matter as well as the learning techniques offered were different to those many of the participants had previously encountered. The programme offered the students valuable knowledge and skills, which they were able to utilize in their lives after the completion of the programme. There were, however, limitations identified in the programme and recommendations in response to these limitations are made at the conclusion of this paper.

This paper provides an analysis of xenophobic violence in South Africa. By examining the root of the term 'xenophobia' it is possible to show how the term has evolved to mean something entirely different in the present day. De Doorns, a small farming town in the Western Cape of South Africa is used as a case study, showing how the xenophobic violence that occurred there in November 2009 arose and manifested. Through informal interviews, analyses of available local and regional statistical data a picture of the xenophobia in De Doorns emerges and is then examined in terms of the current theories on xenophobia. The resulting finding provide some new insight into xenophobia in South Africa and how it is evolving. Past assumptions that locate the root of xenophobic sentiment leading to xenophobic action in a 'hatred' of foreigners may be mistaken as xenophobia can (and does) occur in areas with low levels of prejudice towards foreigners. It does so because dissatisfaction with the government sometimes results in a new form of protest that is, to all appearances, xenophobia, but is not necessarily motivated by xenophobic intent. Rather an underlying xenophobic sentiment that exists throughout the nation has opened the door for poor South Africans to target foreign Africans a tool of protest in order to gain government attention. The whole concept of 'xenophobia' has evolved far beyond its roots to refer to actions that are taken against foreigners for the simple reason that they are foreign. As attacks on foreigners occur with increasing frequency in South Africa it is ever more important to gain a deep understanding of each individual outbreak in order to create a holistic and informed picture of South African xenophobia. This research suggests that some of the basic questions underlying research into xenophobia to be questioned.