Futures literacy in mining: Empowering the African Mining Vision

The 10-year review of the African Mining Vision (AMV) is an opportunity to showcase the need for futures literacy, foresight and anticipatory governance. (Publisher: SAIIA)

The COVID-19 pandemic accentuates the lack of anticipatory capabilities in African mining to enable early detection of emerging disruptors with significant impacts on mining futures. Institutionalising futures literacy at the African Mineral Development Centre (AMDC) and the broader extractive industry would build capabilities to embrace alternative futures of mining and to re-imagine positive visions of African mining. Empowering the AMV would enable the envisioning of alternative and contextually appropriate African futures of mining that facilitate anticipatory governance cultures within the mining sector. Adopting these policy suggestions would accelerate the pace of AMV domestication and enhance the ability of the AMDC to use the future and transform the AMV implementation trajectory.

Implications of a Virtual Parliament on its Constitutional Mandate

In this publication, Rebecca Sibanda of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group reviews the performance of South Africa’s Parliament during the Covid-19 epidemic.

Poor Economy,Poor Education and Planning the Escape

South Africa exited apartheid in 1994 with a fragmented and very unequal education system. The new democratic government had to integrate race-based education departments into a non-racial education system aimed at eradicating racial inequality and preparing learners for the world of work. Unfortunately, in the 27 years since the advent of democracy, the government has only been partially successful in achieving this aim. Although the democratic government registered progress in achieving access and even an improvement in the quality of education, most of the inequalities that existed in the mid-1990s still linger. Most township and deep rural schools still underperform former Model C schools (i.e., former white schools), failing to prepare learners for the 21st-century world of work.

A Plea for Free Trade

Rational arguments for an emotionally conducted debate

Many people are skeptical of free trade and globalization. These arguments are often emotional and can be scientifically refuted, which is what our authors do in this anthology. With our plea for free trade, we want to make the debate more objective.

Brittle Democracies? Comparing Politics in Anglophone Africa

The book compares the progress ten select countries, all former colonies of Britain, have made towards the practice of democracy.

This book will be of great interest to a broad readership including students of politics, international relations and history at tertiary educational institutions as well as the readership that is keen to understand what has shaped the post-colonial political experience of some key Anglophone African countries.

It is about their story

How China, Turkey and Russia influence the media in Africa

The Midpoint Paper Series N° 2/2020 December 2020 - The South African non-voter: An analysis

The Midpoint Paper Series N° 2/2020 December 2020

On 8 May 2019, South Africans voted in their sixth democratic national and provincial elections. A record 26,7 million eligible South Africans registered to vote in the election.2F1 The registered population represented 74.6% of the total voting-age population of over 35,8 million0F†. Over 17.6 million voters participated on election day. Yet electoral participation decreased quite dramatically, accelerating the steady decline in voter turnout across South Africa’s previous democratic elections. The decline in the turnout rate of 8% among registered voters from 73% in 2014 to 66% in the 2019 elections was the sharpest since the 2004 elections. It meant that, for the first time since the founding democratic elections in 1994, less than half (49%) of all eligible South Africans cast a vote in 2019. South Africa’s participation levels are now on par with other low turnout countries in terms of its eligible participation.

Der afrikanische Riese wankt – Südafrikas Angst vor der Schuldenfalle

Rekordarbeitslosigkeit, fehlendes Wachstum, galoppierende Staatsverschuldung, ausbleibende Investitionen und zunehmende Ungleichheit und Verarmung: Südafrika kämpft mit einer komplexen Wirtschaftskrise, derer Präsident Ramaphosa trotz diverser Reformankündigungen nicht Herr zu werden scheint. Zwar trug die Covid19-Pandemie zur Verschärfung der historischen Krise bei, doch ist der Abstieg des Landes vor allem einer verfehlten Wirtschaftspolitik des ANC geschuldet. Nach fast drei Jahren an der Spitze der Regierung schwinden die Hoffnungen, dass Präsident Ramaphosa in der Lage ist, gegen den innerparteilichen Widerstand seine Reformagenda durchzusetzen – mit gravierenden Folgen für das Land, den Präsidenten und den ANC.

Launch of EU-KAS-DDP Migration Project

The EU financed Migration Project of the Democracy Development Programme (DDP) and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) was officially launched on the 23rd of November in Durban.

A short overview of the EU financed Migration Project, which will start its work in January 2021.

The Midpoint Paper Series N° 1/2020 October 2020 - Covid-19 and AfCFTA: How Africa can help itself

Africa’s most ambitious integration project, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is nearing its commercial phase.

Delayed, but not thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic, an enormous joint effort between the African Union (AU), the AfCFTA Secretariat and deal signatories is underway in a final push to realise continental free trade at the start of 2021. This paper examines the new challenges that the coronavirus presents Africa’s integration and how they need to be overcome, as well as the opportunities that may arise from broader global developments currently at play, namely, through these seven themes: 1. COVID-19’s impact on Africa’s integration agenda 2. Business unusual: AfCFTA’s outstanding matters and revised timelines 3. Can Africa benefit from the shift away from globalisation, towards localisation? 4. Avoiding the pitfalls of integration: Lessons from the past 5. The role of non-governmental players 6. The winners and losers 7. What to watch: Momentum, ratification and implementation Bringing together negotiators from 54 African countries, translating text and dialogue into one of the AU’s four official languages and coordinating meetings across six time zones was always going to be a mammoth task. Any hiccup would threaten a launch schedule that had very little margin for error.