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– A policy synthesis
The Republic of South Africa faces the imperative of escaping economic stagnation. This paper seeks to synthesize results from a series of research efforts, including but not limited to the work conducted under the UNU-WIDER project on ‘Regional growth and development in Southern Africa’, and...
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– A firm-level analysis
We investigate the relationship between the corporate income tax burden and firm size in South Africa using a panel dataset from companies’ tax returns. We find that medium-sized companies are experiencing the lowest effective tax rate, while the smallest companies are facing the highest effective...
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Traditionally, much of the research on economic growth drivers has been focused on small and medium enterprises. In recent years the academic focus on small businesses has shifted to a particular group of firms that are interesting from an economic growth and policy development perspective, namely...
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– Experience from Southern Africa
Southern African countries’ interest in biofuel is due of its rural development potential. Finding models to optimize this benefit is therefore paramount. High-energy-density crops with low perishability allow farmers to grow small quantities on existing lands. Highly perishable, low-density crops...
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– Regional development versus national imperatives
This paper highlights the key strategies, both regional and domestic, that have led to the current structure of the poultry value chain in Southern Africa. While large firm strategies in poultry have been found to be regional in nature, and important regional developments in soybean production...
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– A look forward
This paper assesses biofuels technology readiness and provides foresight to biofuels development in Southern Africa. Efficient conversion pathways, coupled with biomass from waste or high-yielding energy crops, reduces both the costs of biofuels production and the environmental impacts. Currently...
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The Southern African region, from a purely biophysical perspective, has huge potential for biofuel production, especially in Mozambique and Zambia. Although many of the soils are sandy and acidic, with careful management and correct fertilization, they should be highly productive. We suggest that...
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World biofuel production has been increasing to improve energy security and mitigate global warming. Southern Africa’s bioenergy demand could increase with South Africa’s planned fuel blending mandates, triggering increased demand for feedstocks and agricultural land. Ensuring sustained production...
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Rapid population growth, urbanization, and income growth are triggering increased demand for high-value agricultural products across Southern Africa with scope for gains from trade and regional integration. We analyse the animal feed to poultry value chain in Zambia focusing on the industry...
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– Implications for local suppliers in Zambia
The last two decades have seen rapid economic growth in Zambia and the proliferation of foreign supermarket chain stores. However, this growth has translated into neither significant job creation nor significant poverty reduction. Furthermore, while the expansion of supermarket chains in Zambia has...
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Given likely increases in biofuel demand across Southern Africa, we identify suitable production models in Zambia for the Southern African market. This is crucial given, on the one hand, the problems of contract failure and transaction costs that plague outgrower models in Southern Africa and, on...
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– Competition in road transportation of perishable goods between Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Rapid urbanization and rising income levels in Southern Africa have increased the consumption of perishable and processed food products. This paper relies primarily on firm-level interview data to assess competition and bottlenecks in transporting time-sensitive perishable products across borders...
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– Political economy, trade, and policy environment
Expansion of biofuels production and consumption at the regional and national levels relies on both supportive energy prices and policy interventions. Despite enthusiasm for policy interventions to stimulate biofuel production in Southern African countries in the mid-2000s, the years since have seen...
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The need for energy security and climate change mitigation have increased blending mandates worldwide; in Southern Africa, demand for biofuels could increase following South Africa’s planned blending mandates. However, land constraints limit local industry expansion, with demand likely to be met in...
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– Competition in road transportation between Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Efficient transport links are critical to enhancing the integration of markets in Southern Africa. This paper assesses the structure of markets, competition, and prices and costs of road transportation between urban hubs in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Key findings are...
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Given unsuccessful experiences to date in establishing large-scale investments for biofuels in Zambia, this paper explores the social constraints that may hinder future efforts to use the same models. The author reviews the legal framework that has guided the establishment of most agricultural...
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This paper presents some methodological improvements made to the linked SATIM–eSAGE energy-economy-environment modelling framework for analysing energy and climate policy in South Africa. The improvements include the linking of the households and the other economic sectors of the eSAGE economy-wide...
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Developed as well as developing countries will have to increase their ambition relative to their stated Nationally Determined Contributions to limit global temperature increases to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. South Africa’s Nationally Determined Contribution, in line with national policy, is to...
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This paper aims to describe funding structures of companies liable for tax in South Africa and how this relates to other characteristics, including ownership, of the companies. The research that the paper reports on was performed as descriptive analyses. While no clear indication of a preference for...
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It is estimated that biofuel demand in South Africa will increase to 1,550 million litres by 2025 following the introduction of mandatory blending rates in 2014. Land and water constraints, however, limit domestic supply ability. Zambia, due to abundance of land, suitable climate, supportive...
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– Implications on suppliers in Botswana and South Africa
This paper explores the effect of the spread of supermarkets on the participation of suppliers in supermarket value chains in Botswana and South Africa. Using secondary data and in-depth interviews with key players in the value chain, the paper evaluates the buyer power of supermarkets evidenced in...
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Labour market analysis in the South African context provides a relatively robust understanding of the individual characteristics that influence wage differentials across workers (i.e. supply-side characteristics), but provides relatively little insight into the firm-level characteristics influencing...
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This paper contributes to the understanding of the linkages between exporting, labour demand, and wages in South Africa. We disentangle labour market differences between exporters and non-exporters and find that exporters employ more people and pay higher wages. Given these higher wages we...
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South Africa’s Employment Tax Incentive, launched in 2014, aimed to address low youth employment by reducing the cost of hiring young workers. We make use of anonymized tax administrative data from the 2012–2015 tax years to examine the effect of the Incentive on youth employment. We match firms...
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– The case of the animal feed to poultry value chain
This paper considers findings of studies analysing the development of a regional animal feed to poultry value chain in southern Africa (Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe). The southern African regional poultry value chain is underdeveloped, although important changes include investments by...
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This study discusses the potential for expanding cultivation of biofuel feedstock in Mozambique from several angles. Taking the case of sugarcane, it explores the potential to expand production, through exploring both biophysical factors and patterns of existing investment. We review recent...
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Mozambique is one of the most promising African countries for producing biofuels and the national biofuel policy of 2009 identifies measures to incentivize biofuel production. Demand for biofuels in the Southern African Development Community is expected to increase over the next few years as 7 of...
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– A comparison of findings from South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Since the early 2000s, there has been rapid growth in the number and spread of supermarkets in southern Africa. This paper is a synthesis of key findings of studies undertaken in Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe on the expansion of supermarkets and the impact this has had on suppliers...
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Using the universe of South African corporate tax returns for 2009–14, we estimate profit- and debt-shifting responses in South Africa. We find evidence that South African subsidiaries engage in profit shifting and that profit-shifting responses to tax incentives across all channels are...
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– National trajectories and regional integration
This paper explores the linkages between the national systems of innovation of Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and their respective mineral extraction and mineral processing value chains, including input industries. Our analysis reveals four individual national systems of innovation...
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– A comparative analysis of policy frameworks in three Southern African countries
This paper explores the potential to leverage large-scale mineral extraction in Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to foster mineral beneficiation and upstream industries. The evidence suggests that the success or failure of a resource-based industrialization approach is country and sector specific...
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The South African Revenue Service and National Treasury Firm-Level Panel is an unbalanced panel data set created by merging several sources of administrative tax data received during 2015. The four data sources that constitute the panel are: company income tax from registered firms who submit tax...
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