Unlocking Potential: The Shared Effort Shaping South Africa’s Future

If you follow South African media (as we do regularly, with the Daily Maverick being one of our go-to publications), it’s easy to swing between despair and hope. News naturally focuses on the country’s challenges and problems. Our last blog on South Africa touches on some of these.

But there is also good news coming out of the country.

One positive development we’re watching is the growing collaboration between government and business through Operation Vulindlela (Zulu for “open the way”) and the Government–Business Partnership. Senior government officials and business leaders—including some 160 CEOs involved in various ways—meet regularly through a Joint Strategic Oversight Committee to track progress, tackle bottlenecks and hold each other accountable.

And there are signs that this collaboration is making a difference. Power outages have effectively ended, private investment in electricity generation has surged, and there has been measurable improvement in the performance of the country’s ports and rail system. South Africa has also received recent credit-rating upgrades, while the economy has recorded six consecutive quarters of growth.

There is still a long way to go—particularly on unemployment, economic growth (at just below 1% and needs to be at 3%) and the effectiveness of government, especially at the municipal level. But the growing partnership between government and business gives us another reason to be optimistic about South Africa’s future.