Articles for March 2022
The Russia-Ukraine war will hurt SA investment ambitions: lessons from nine wars
Lessons from nine wars since the early 1970s, and the Brexit vote, show that global foreign direct investment inflows generally decline during the year of the war and the year after. South Africa, having embarked on an investment drive since 2018, faces a tough job making the country more investor friendly and marketing it to the rest of the world given the Covid-19 pandemic and most recently the Russia-Ukraine war. Thus, policy makers need to be more aggressive in implementing structural economic reforms alongside public efforts to demonstrate progress, to achieve foreign direct investment targets.
Social stratification around the NSFAS threshold: A dynamic approach to profiling the missing middle
In 2018, government announced that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) would fund all eligible post-school students whose household income was R350 000 or less. The Department of Higher Education and Training is now focusing on what it calls the “missing middle” – students who come from households whose income is too high to make the NSFAS threshold but too low to afford fees –between R350 000 and R600 000. Guided by the poverty dynamics literature, we show that the “missing middle” is a complex category, comprising two distinct groups based on their relative economic stability or vulnerability. A key consideration for how we understand socio-economic need – on both sides of the NSFAS threshold – should reflect the household circumstances that generate economic vulnerability, not only household income at a given point in time.
How South African agriculture - and consumers - will feel the war in Ukraine.
The Russia-Ukraine war has raised concerns about potential escalating global food insecurity as these countries are major exporters of grains, oilseeds, fertilizers, and crude oil. Since the war started, the prices of these commodities have risen significantly, and South Africa, interlinked in the global commodities market, is exposed to these prices increases. This article attempts to show how the conflict may affect South Africa’s agricultural sector, as well as consumers, by focusing on trade linkages of agricultural commodities and inputs prices, as well as price transmissions [1]