Since democratisation of South Africa in 1994, the economy of South Africa underwent significant structural changes. Among these structural changes was electrification for the poor rural areas. During the apartheid era, about two-thirds of the nation lacked access to electricity and hence, provision for electricity to everyone was considered a crucial part of the economic development, post 1994. Since then economic growth and the demand for electricity in South Africa have been increasing at an unprecedented rate. The electricity supply did not increase proportionally to the increase in the consumption of electricity. In responding to the high increase in the demand for electricity, the electricity utility planned to build new power stations and put back in use the ones which were mothballed. But unfortunately the plan for investment in these power stations was late and in 2008, the existing power stations could not manage to supply enough electricity. The demand for electricity was such that it nearly damaged the power generating circuit and the electricity supply utility had to resort to load shedding. The imbalance between electricity supply and demand led to industrial sectors losing on production and as a result led to a downturn in economic growth. It also led to an increase in electricity prices which had a negative effect on individual and private sectors’ purchasing power. It is against this background that this study is designed to investigate the long term relationship between economic growth and electricity supply. The additional variables such as electricity prices, trade openness, capital and employment were included as intermittent variables to form a multivariate framework. This study also assesses the Granger causality between these variables to determine which variable supersedes the other. Two models were applied in this study: The Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds approach and the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) Granger-causality. The ARDL bounds technique was used to detect the long term relationship between economic growth, electricity supply, electricity prices, trade openness, capital and employment using annual data from 1985 to 2014. The ARDL technique was chosen over the conventional models such as Engle and Granger (1987) and Johansen (1988) for the research for the following reasons: Firstly, the ARDL technique uses a single reduced form of equation to examine the long term relationship of the variables as opposed to the conventional Johansen test that employs a system of equations. Secondly, it is suitable to use for testing co-integration when a small sample data is used. Thirdly, it does not require the underlying variables to be integrated of similar order e.g. integrated of order zero I(0), integrated of order one I(1) or fractionally integrated, for it to be applicable. Lastly, it does not rely on the properties of unit root datasets and this makes it possible for the Granger-causality to be applied in testing the long term relationships between the variables. The VECM Granger-causality is used to examine the Granger-causality between the chosen variables. It was chosen for its ability to develop longer term forecasting when dealing with an unconstrained model. The unit root results confirmed that the variables were stationary at first difference using Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF), Phillips and Perron (PP) and Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shit (KPSS). The ARDL bound approach outcomes revealed that economic growth, electricity supply, trade openness, electricity prices, employment and capital move together in the long term. There were three co-integrated equations under the export and trade models while under the import model there was one co-integrated equation. The results are such that electricity prices have a negative impact on economic growth. The results further evidenced that; electricity supply, trade openness, employment and capital have a positive impact on economic growth in the long term. The VECM Granger causality findings suggested a unidirectional causality flowing from electricity supply, trade, exports, electricity prices, employment and capital to economic growth in the long term. There was another unidirectional causality established flowing from economic growth, trade openness, electricity prices, employment and capital to electricity supply. A one-way causality flowing from economic growth, electricity supply, electricity prices, employment and capital to export was evidenced. Overall, the study’s results of bidirectional Granger-causality between electricity supply and economic growth have a number of implications for forecasters and policy makers. This feedback hypothesis implies that the high level of economic growth leads to a high level of electricity supply, which would stimulate economic growth. Hence, South Africa demonstrates a kind of electricity dependence in a manner that a sufficiently large supply of electricity seems to ensure high economic growth. Electricity supply is a vitally important factor for economic growth in South Africa. It is therefore necessary that South African policy makers formulate investor friendly policies that will encourage, promote and attract capital inflows to stimulate electricity supply. The South African government needs to primarily deregulate the electricity supply industry which is owned by Eskom (a monopoly), and allow more investors into this industry. The government should promote a change to other forms of energy sources such as renewable energy sources which will play an important role in restoring the balance between electricity supply and consumption. Moreover, it is recommended that the electricity regulator should take steps to curb the severe electricity price increases and to ensure prices affordable to the poor communities. The policy makers need to implement some investor friendly policies that will encourage and promote capital formation. Furthermore, the government should invest towards more job creating sectors such as (Small and Medium Enterprises) SMEs. Finally, the government should take into consideration the importance of trade openness to attract international investments into the economy. It is hoped that the findings of this study would prove beneficial to policy makers in South Africa and elsewhere in the world where power outages are experienced, and assist them in combating the problem.

The effect of FDI on economic growth is not a straight jacket. Literature has shown that the effect of FDI on economic growth can be either positive or negative. The positive effects of FDI can be caused by increase in output stimulated by new technological innovations and increase in capital flows. The negative effects could result in a ‘crowding out’ effect on domestic investments, external vulnerability and dependence, destructive competition of foreign affiliates with domestic firms, and market stealing effect due to poor absorptive capacity.This treatise will attempt to shed light on the effect foreign direct investment has on economic growth in South Africa in order to ascertain whether a positive or negative relationship exists between these two variables. This study thus aims to investigate, analyse and estimate the extent to which FDI impacts economic growth in South Africa. The findings of this research will provide policymakers, commercial businesses and scholars with relevant updated theoretical and empirical results that will assist relevant government policy makers in generating effective measures of attracting FDI if it proves to be beneficial for the host country. If the results of the study prove that FDIs do not generate positive spill over effects then the policymakers are thus obliged to formulate policies that will discourage FDIs from penetrating the host country’s economy.

This study investigated the capacity building for developmental local government with reference to the Kicukiro District of Rwanda. Its aim was to examine the contribution of capacity-building interventions towards a developmental local government and at the same time investigate factors that hinder their implementation in Kicukiro district. The study provides an extensive historical background on local government in Rwa-nda with a particular focus on its policy, legal and institutional framework, whereby the developmental local government environment has been analysed. Furthermore, this study explores the theoretical framework of capacity building in general, and in this regard particular emphasis was given to capacity building in relation to developmental local government. The study also argued that without appropriate capacity it would be difficult for the district to fulfil its developmental mandate. This research followed both qualitative and quantitative approaches of study. It involved a survey in which a structured questionnaire and in-depth interviews were used as data gathering instruments. Through data analysis, findings of the study have shed light on the fact that capacity building constitutes an indispensable mechanism for local government to achieve its developmental mandate, despite challenges associated with the process of capacity building. The study found that the Kicukiro district has made a significant progress towards the implementation of capacity-building interventions despite the fact that these interventions are still fragmented, uncoordinated and still supply-driven. Furthermore, the study revealed that the capacities already built generated considerable impetus that contributed to socio-economic development within the Kicukiro district. The study also found that despite the progress made in both capacity building and development in Kicukiro district, there are capacity gaps and factors which are undermining further progress in this regard. Therefore, the study recommends, among others, an effective co-ordination of capacity-building interventions in order to avoid duplication and fragmentation of capacity-building efforts.

The world has become one small global village. This is a result of globalisation, the advancement in technology and many other contributing factors. Economic incidents and outlook in Europe, Asia and America have a direct and immediate impact on the developing countries and Africa in particular. Positive economic growth in Africa’s major trading partners has direct positive implications on Africa’s economy. Negative economic growth in Africa’s major trading partners has undesirable consequences on Africa’s economy. As a developing country with a diversified economy which mainly relies on exports and imports, South Africa’s economy is at the forefront of this economic risk. Globalisation has effectively resulted in the Republic of South African’s (RSA) export driven tank container industry being at direct economic and financial risk from global financial melt downs, volatile exchange rates, fluctuating steel prices, souring labour costs, and more importantly competitiveness risk. In the history of the industrial era, never has it been more important to have and maintain a competitive advantage. This is achieved through, inter alia, the development and successful implementation of a competitive strategy. A competitive advantage assists an organisation to financially survive, expand its operations, grow market share and achieve set corporate objectives and goals. A successful organisation has a massive social impact and economic contribution in a country. It is therefore no surprise that the field of competitive strategy has received vast academic interest. Amidst the ever changing world and markets, a competitive strategy needs to be fine-tuned, revised and reinvented. What has worked in the past will not ensure tomorrow success. The purpose of this research treatise is to investigate the factors that led to a sustained competitive advantage for a tank container manufacturer. This was achieved by applying various scientific methodologies. A case study approach was used as the most appropriate research methodology for this study. This approach entailed the use of a phenomenological paradigm. An extensive literature review on competitiveness and of strategy formulation and implementation was conducted, which has led to the development of research propositions. The study entailed a case study of a single tank container manufacturer in the RSA. The study contributes positively to the academic field of competitiveness and to the existing academic body of knowledge. It also makes a positive contribution to tank container manufacturing academic literature on competitiveness and organisational strategy formulation and strategy implementation.

South Africa (SA) has been a recipient of Official Development Assistance (ODA) prior to the democratic elections in 1994. Even though there has been progress in terms of aligning the ODA to SA government priorities and the good aid management principles, it has been a challenge to trace the amount of the ODA received across government departments and its impact thereon. For various reasons, reporting on the impact of the ODA has been very challenging for most of the departments. Some departments do not use government systems such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) account, through which it is required by the Policy Framework and Procedural Guidelines for the Management of ODA that all funds are transferred and channelled. As stipulated in the Policy Framework and Procedural Guidelines for the Management of ODA, the ODA is targeted towards innovation, piloting and value-add, as it only constitutes 1.5 percent of the overall budget of the country. As a result, most government departments utilise ODA as a gap-filler, to pay for unplanned activities that would have otherwise not been budgeted for in the government’s fiscal budget. This leads to departments not reporting as they fear that the ODA will then be withdrawn from them (Policy Guidelines2003). The Department of Science and Technology is one of the South African government departments that received high ODA for the period 2005-2011. The department not only spans across all sectors in terms of research and capacity development, but it has also established strategic international partnerships to collaborate in the research arena. In light of the above, it is interesting to explore how coordination is carried out and what impact if any; 2 the ODA has on the proposed Department of Science and Technology projects. This study explores the Department of Science and Technology, which is a recipient and implementer of ODA, and analyses how they co-ordinate, utilise and report on the ODA. The project that will be analysed is a Sector Budget Support Programme that focuses on poverty alleviation within the capacity development sector.

This research study examined public participation activities in Lady Frere during the LED strategy formulation process. Lady Frere is one of the three small towns constituting Emalahleni Local Municipality (ELM).A review of existing literature and legal frameworks suggest that authentic participation by the public occurs when the dimensions of representativeness, interactiveness, use of stakeholder/public inputs and the quality of public inputs are satisfied. The current study sought to identify conditions that would serve as a measurement to be satisfied before we can say authenticity was factored into the public participation effort during the Local Economic Development (LED) strategy formulation process in Lady Frere. A three-tier model was adopted to assess the performance of the ELM public involvement initiatives during the LED process. Key indicators of the four dimensions of authenticity were formulated and used to determine authenticity of these initiatives (programs).The data for this study came from analysing the LED strategy (2010-2015) document and the qualitative interviews held with purposively selected respondents. Nineteen respondents representing different institutions in Lady Frere agreed to be interviewed for the study. Organisations represented included public service institutions in operation in Lady Frere, private formal businesses in operation in the area and some civil society structures present in the town. The results of this study suggest that the municipality fell short of implementing public participation programs that achieved authenticity during the LED strategy formulation process. A careful and well-intentioned use of various public participation tools that embrace increased interaction between municipal employees and the public can assist in achieving better levels of authenticity in their public involvement initiatives. The willingness of municipal staff to adopt new ideas and innovations learned during public engagements is key to achieving higher levels of authenticity in their programs. Municipal participation programs would greatly benefit from training that increases individual acceptance of public participation as a valid service delivery mechanism. The researcher took opportunity to suggest the following recommendations for the ELM to work towards: Increased opportunities for occurrence of authentic public participation; Creation of individual ownership of authenticity in public participation; Creation of community partnerships to foster authenticity in public participation.

In this study, the focus will be on the possibility of a lack of learning during execution of projects, which could lead to poor performance in development effectiveness. This study will particularly look at the lessons learnt by individual road infrastructure projects and examine whether or not the learning points were embraced into other projects. The African Development Bank (AfDB) is an example of a multilateral donor agency that predominantly operates in Africa where there are some challenges with aid effectiveness as described earlier. The study is not an attempt to represent the use of lessons learnt and knowledge management in multilateral agencies in general; it is rather a start from which other researchers can build on in order to answer the question: What can donor agencies do to improve aid effectiveness in their project execution? The major contribution of this study is to encourage donor agencies to look at whether their organisations are learning from their different projects as they seek better development effectiveness.

Social protection measures are poverty reduction interventions implemented to assist in reducing poverty shocks of communities. This study considered the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) that has been implemented in Malawi with the aim of reducing poverty amongst subsistence farmers by providing them with subsidized farm inputs. The study was conducted in the rural area of Lilongwe District, under Traditional Authority Kabudula. The study mainly focussed on the outcomes of implementing the FISP and it entails whether or not the poverty reduction intervention is really achieving its goals. Thus, the study greatly evaluates the effectiveness of subsidizing farm inputs in reducing poverty amongst households in rural communities characterised by subsistence farming. This study was mainly qualitative in nature and data was collected through interviews and Focus Group Discussions. Some quantitative data for specific trends of national indicators was collected through document. Mainly, content analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data and descriptive statistical analysis with the aid of Microsoft Excel was engaged to analyse the quantitative data. The study found that that FISP assist in household food security only in the short term. Among the reasons cited, the package size received by households has become smaller with sharing tendencies that have been devised to help households that do not receive the inputs or qualify to receive them. This practice is compromising the agricultural productivity in terms of quantities as it lasts only in the short-term before the next harvest. When households’ food reserves are depleted, households become food insecure and poverty sets in again. The study thus reveals that FISP implementation is not operating as a sustainable programme as its intended goal is not being achieved in the long-term. The study also found that coupled with the fact that there is no clear policy guidelines on graduation and that there is continued benefitting of the same beneficiaries, FISP is nowhere close to its phasing-out stage in social protection perspective.

Entrepreneurship as a source of economic growth and competitiveness as well as job creation and the advancement of social interests is well documented. Despite these important contributions to the economies of countries, a shortage of entrepreneurial activity exists across borders and specifically in developing countries such as South Africa. The purpose of this study was to determine the perception and image of an entrepreneur in the eyes of various stakeholders. The reasoning behind this was that if the image of an entrepreneur could be determined, one could establish whether the image positively or negatively influences entrepreneurial intentions as well as potential future entrepreneurial activity. More specifically, the primary objective was to identify the perception and image that potential entrepreneurs (students) and existing entrepreneurs (small business owners) have of an entrepreneur. In the body of knowledge or general literature on entrepreneurship, the most commonly discussed topics are the nature and importance of entrepreneurship, the attributes (personality traits, characteristics and skills) associated with an entrepreneur, various push and pull factors, various rewards and drawbacks of such a career and the challenges entrepreneurs face. It is these aspects of entrepreneurship that stakeholders will most likely have been exposed to, and that most possibly have influenced their perception and image of an entrepreneur. The aforementioned aspects provided an overview of the theoretical body of knowledge on which the perception and image of an entrepreneur is based. The present study adopted a qualitative research paradigm with a phenomenological approach to achieve the research objectives of the study. Within this context, the study made use of a qualitative method for data collection and a quantitative method for data analysis. As such, a mixed methods approach was adopted. More specifically, a qualitative dominant mixed research method was implemented. A continuous word association test, which is a projective technique, was adopted as the qualitative means of data collection. This test involved asking participants to recall the words that come to mind when presented with the word “entrepreneur”. This method was selected because of its ability to reveal both affective and cognitive associations with the concept “entrepreneur”. A quantitative summative (manifest) content analysis was used as the quantitative research method for analysing the data. The continuous word association test was conducted among three sample groups, namely students prior to commencing, and students after completing a module in entrepreneurship, and small business owners. Student and small business owner participants were asked to write down as many words or phrases as possible that came to mind when they thought of the word “entrepreneur”, which was the stimulus word, within a ten-minute period. These responses were then collated and coded by developing a coding framework based on brand image and entrepreneurship literature. In studies on brand image, the components of image are considered to be tristructured in nature, consisting of cognitive (what the individual knows), affective (how the individual feels) and holistic (overall symbolism, combination of affective and cognitive) evaluations. The words generated by the participants in this study were broadly coded according to these categories and further subcategorised by searching for themes within the broad categories, which was facilitated and guided by an in-depth investigation of the entrepreneurship literature. The findings of this study show that the words generated by all three groups of participants were mostly of a cognitive nature, followed by words of a general or affective nature. As such, the vast majority of words generated by all three groups related to what the participants knew about an entrepreneur (cognitive) versus how they felt about one (affective), and were grounded in the management or entrepreneurship literature. When comparing the top ten words most frequently associated with the term “entrepreneur” by the three groups of participants, the attribute risk-taker was the most frequently recalled word among all three groups. Students prior to undertaking the entrepreneurship module associated an entrepreneur with being creative and a risk-taker, having a business enterprise and being involved in the selling of goods and services. Students after completing the module in entrepreneurship associated an entrepreneur with being profit-orientated, a risk-taker, innovative and original, and being opportunistic. Small business owners, on the other hand, associated an entrepreneur with being a risk-taker, innovative and original, goal- and achievement-orientated and profit-orientated. The findings show that all groups of participants associated an entrepreneur principally with certain attributes rather than with learned skills and competencies, and that all groups had a more positive than negative image of an entrepreneur. It was also found that exposure to entrepreneurship literature has an influence on the perception and image that students have of an entrepreneur. Because the words recalled by students after completing the entrepreneurship module were more in line with those recalled by small business owners, than with those recalled by students before starting the module, it can be suggested that entrepreneurship literature contributes to a more realistic image of an entrepreneur among students. This study has contributed to the field of entrepreneurship research by adopting a qualitative dominant research paradigm in conjunction with quantitative research methods to explore the complexity of the term “entrepreneur”. Furthermore, this study has been able to establish how individuals feel about entrepreneurship, in terms of being either positive or negative, by adding an affective aspect to the cognitive aspect of entrepreneurial decision-making. By conducting a continuous word association test among students prior to beginning and after completing a module in entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial knowledge of students before being exposed to entrepreneurship literature was established, and subsequently the effectiveness of the entrepreneurship module determined. It is hoped that the findings of this study have added value to the entrepreneurship body of knowledge and can be used in future studies as a tool to address the problem of low entrepreneurial intention and activity among South Africans. Furthermore, it is hoped that by creating a positive image of an entrepreneur, entrepreneurship as a desirable career choice can be promoted and an entrepreneurial culture developed within communities and broader society.

This paper investigates the effects of real exchange rate misalignment (REM) on economic growth in Kenya over the period 1964-2009. The real exchange rate misalignment is defined as the difference between the equilibrium exchange rate and the actual real exchange rate (RER). The equilibrium real exchange rate was obtained by using the purchasing power parity (PPP) approach. To this effect, the study examined the existence or absence of the cointegration between the REM and economic growth, using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach. The ARDL approach is employed to determine both the long-run and short-run dynamics of the model. The results suggest that no long-run relationship exists between economic growth and the REM in Kenya. The short-run model is then estimated, using the OLS (ordinary least squares) method. From this model, it is determined that trade openness has a positive impact on economic growth, while foreign aid has a negative impact on economic growth; and both are considered empirically significant. The inflation rate and REM both negatively impact economic growth, but are empirically insignificant. All variables corroborate the a priori expectations.