South Africa has become a significant role player in the international relations since being readmitted into the world community after the first democratic election in 1994. The primary focus of country’s international relations is the African continent. South Africa has played a pivotal role in bringing peace across the continent. There has also been an increase in South Africa’s engagement with the continent on economic and trade issues. South Africa’s economic diplomacy has been scrutinized from different angles. There has been perceptions of a South Africa with imperialists or hegemonic tendencies resembling those of the West. There are also those who view South Africa’s economic role in the continent in the positive light as a contributor to economic growth and development. The South African governments have always preached the notion of the “African agenda” and the interest in fair trade and engagement with the continent. This study assesses different debates regarding South Africa’s economic diplomacy in Africa and explores if this is benefiting the continent’s development. The study also considers if such economic diplomacy has positive spin off for the South African economy. Since economic diplomacy is operated at government level the study also considers how economic diplomacy is coordinated in South Africa. There are a number of recommendations presented for the improvement of economic diplomacy in South Africa.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / This study examined the role the Malaysian government played in developing the Malaysian economy as a means to eliminating poverty and inequality and explored the lessons South Africa can learn from Malaysia's development experience. Under British colonial rule Malaysia developed a divided multi-ethnic society characterised by gross inequality and high levels of poverty. Jolted by the 1969 race riots and in a major departure from the laissez-faire economic policy, the government embarked on the New Economic Policy in 1970. This ambitious twenty-year social engineering plan ushered in greater state intervention in the economy. It greatly reduced poverty among indigenous Malays and made substantial progress towards achieving inter-ethnic economic parity. / South Africa

According to the canons of conventional economic philosophy the process of economic interpretation should be value neutral and strictly fall within the bounds of normative science. This approach is concerned not with goal setting but only with the technical possibilities of alternative means of successful tactics in a given overall strategy. It is the author's thesis that such premises patently ignore the fundamental truths of development problems, and that there exists a genuine need to bridge the gap that demarcates theory from practicality and truth from illusion. To seek "development" implies a challenge to the "status quo" of menial existence and perpetual servitude to the inhospitable forces of ones own environment. This attitude is in itself a value judgement, and in underdeveloped societies it is more than a mere academic quibble. Accordingly, this paper not only implicitly assumes "development" to be a desirable goal but also that it is necessary, and the objective of this study of an underdeveloped community shall be to examine the theoretical relevance, or otherwise, of general and partial theories of underdevelopment against the quantitative and qualitative evidence of the course of events that have in the past, and are likely in the future, to influence the development of the "Rhodesian economy".

Available statistics on growth trends in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are wanting, particularly net per capita growth rates. The analysis of available data from 1970 to 2012 by this study, for instance, shows that the net real GDP growth rate for the ECOWAS is 0.52%. Only four countries had net growth rates above 1% per annum mean growth rate of ECOWAS region. At the estimated growth rate, the prospect of accelerated growth in ECOWAS is very weak. The Barro endogenous growth model states that government provision of services can generate externalities to the private productive activities. Government’s provision of productive services in ECOWAS can ensure long-run per capita output growth without the per capita growth rate running into steady state growth. However, there are divergent views as to whether government provision of services induces long run economic growth. These views are based on different schools of thought. For instance, the economic freedom school argues for minimum government involvement (small governments) to ensure economic and political freedom to induce private investors invest and encourage economic growth. The optimal government school of thought (medium size governments) argues that government spending enhances private productivity growth through the provision of infrastructure, spending on research and development, public education, sewage, other public goods and protection through functional law and order systems. The optimal school of thought also acknowledges that government expenditure can also reduce economic growth through increases in taxation. An increase in taxation reduces the returns on investment of physical and human capital and in research and development (R&D) of private firms. This thesis investigates the impact of government expenditure on the provision of public services on economic growth in ECOWAS. To assess the impact of government expenditure on the provision of services on economic growth of ECOWAS, this thesis assesses whether the size of government, government expenditure and economic institutions promoted economic growth in ECOWAS. The thesis also determines whether per capita government capital expenditure, per capita government consumption expenditure, per capita private capital stock, per capita manufacturing output, per capita services output and per capita agricultural output have any impact on per capita real GDP growth in ECOWAS. To carry out this study, data were collected from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) database and Transparency International (TI) database. The data used covered the period of 1970 – 2013. The statistical research methods applied are the time-series methods of panel unit root test, panel co-integration test, and panel regression analysis, using both panel OLS regression models and estimation and inferences in co-integrated panel data regression methods. The panel OLS regression models applied are the panel OLS regression; panel fixed effect model (FEM) regression and the panel random effect model (REM) regression. The estimation and inferences in co-integrated panel data regression models applied are panel VEC regression model, panel DOLS regression and panel FMOLS regression. The panel DOLS regression and panel FMOLS regression models do not have an intercept, unlike their pure time-series models, which have intercepted. To ensure that the parameters estimated are reliable, this thesis conducted diagnostic tests to subject the regression result to scrutiny. The estimated panel data regression using panel OLS regression, panel FEM regression and panel REM regression indicate that the results of the estimated parameters were spurious having both autocorrelations and heteroscedasticity. High values of adjusted R-squares that were approaching one and high significant values of t statistics but very low values of Durbin-Watson Statistics demonstrated the existence of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation in residuals. The results of the diagnostic tests also show that the DOLS estimated regression model out-performed both VEC and FMOLS regression models based on both aggregate data and per capita data estimated parameters. The results of the parameter estimated using panel VEC and panel FMOLS regression models showed that both panel VEC and panel FMOLS regression models had the problems of their residuals having not only autocorrelations but heteroscedasticity. The panel DOLS regression results were satisfactory, having no multicollinearity, autocorrelations and heteroscedasticity. The estimated panel DOLS regression results were applied to test hypotheses formulated to guide this thesis. Results from panel DOLS estimated parameters show that the existing government size in ECOWAS stimulated economic growth. The results also showed that the government expenditure exhibited an inverted U-shape with respect to economic growth. The thesis also showed that existing government size in ECOWAS significantly stimulated economic growth in the region. The results of regression indicate that economic institutions contribute negatively to the economic growth of the ECOWAS. The results also established that government capital expenditure per capita has significantly engendered economic growth. Government consumption expenditure per capita stimulated economic growth. However, private capital stock per capita has not stimulated economic growth in ECOWAS. Service sector output per capita, agricultural output per capita and manufacturing output per capita stimulated significantly economic growth in the ECOWAS sub-region.

The purpose of this study is to show there is no special economic or general development theory tailor-made for West Africa. Maybe, when all general theories are valid, some are more valid than others. The recent emergence of "development theories" from academics in the "Third and Fourth World" countries is both an expression of serious doubts with orthodox development theories, as well as a serious search for self-assertion. These attempts to devise an appropriate theoretical concept geared towards the interpretation and analysis of the development process in these regions are, at bottom, also a response to the dynamics of economic and social change. The growing awareness of these views reflects the extent to which these processes of change are at work. As we shall soon observe, the attempts by the various orthodox authors of development theories to diagnose the underlying causes of development, the link with the world systems and the proposed future strategies, have very little in common. Take, for example, the economic system of the sixteenth century that generated modern industrial capitalism. This system was made up of three interdependent parts: a developed core in Western Europe, a partially developed semiperiphery in southern and eastern Europe, and an underdeveloped periphery of the rest of the world. From this, one can see, with some persuasion, that the dynamic of capitalism (or of a fully developed market economy) is based on the structural imbalance created by integrating the West Africa economies at different levels of development in what Prof. Wallerstein called a "world-system." There are probably few who would quarrel with this part of the formulation - although its neglect as a serious theory of economic development by economists, is, to this author, certainly one of the more interesting occurrences in modern history. The question that is open to debate is the degree to which this imbalance (in West Africa) tends toward permanence - the degree to which "underdevelopment" develops along with development to become a relatively stable economic adjustment. None of the development theories reviewed in the thesis has sufficient time depth to assess the question of permanence with empirical data, nor do they attempt to do so. Instead, the problem is tackled as follows. The nonindustrial nations of the world have not developed because they have failed the preconditions for it - a market mentality, local economic differentiation, "modern" socio-cultural institutions receptive to economic development (entrepreneurship). But none of these holds in the indigeneous societies of West Africa where there is no lack of entrepreneurship and little in the way of social and cultural impediments to growth. The most common alternative explanation is that the "surplus" necessary to endogenous growth is being drained in export-import trade with the developed systems. This thesis explores the dimensions of development in the economies like those of West Africa which are in a period of drastic change and dissatisfaction with the conventional paradigms. Structurally, this study has been divided into five chapters. The introductory chapter defines the uniqueness of the West African case. This uniqueness arises from uncensured acceptance of Western norms and models and reliance on growth - through capital-intensive imported technology. Coupled with this is also the idea of measuring the successes (if any) and the failures with the yardsticks accepted and applicable in the West, Chapter two will review the general literature in development (Dualism, Strategical, Foreign Trade, Sociological and Psychological, and Marxist theories) and then prescribe an indigenous model, Self-Reliance, as an alternative to the reviewed theories. Chapter three examines the physical environment and economy of the region. Chapter four deals with the acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis that is, when all general theories are valid, some are more valid than others and Chapter five deals with the policy implications and conclusions. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Unknown

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Arts in (Political Studies) University of the Witwatersrand February, 2015 / The ANC ascended to government against the backdrop of a rapidly changing global political economic order after the end of the Cold War. This effectively marked the collapse of communism as a global political force and the concomitant dominance of neoliberalism. In 1996, the African National Congress government adopted the Growth Employment and Redistribution strategy (GEAR) as its new economic blue print, through which it would pursue its transformation agenda. In so doing, the ANC circumvented economic policy consultation processes with its political alliance partners and declared GEAR ‘non-negotiable’. This research argues that the shift to GEAR was essentially an economic policy alignment with the dominant post -Cold War neoliberal discourse and practice. It was fashioned deliberately by key ANC policy makers who had bought into the neoliberal assumption that development would occur after economic growth had been attained. The GEAR strategy privileged market led reforms which subordinated the transformation agenda to orthodox macroeconomic considerations. The pro-market bias which began with the adoption of the GEAR strategy has continued to shape South Africa’s post-apartheid economic policy environment to a significant extent.

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