 ESSET is a program of research, capacity development and policy influencing that essentially addresses the inclusive growth and economic transformation challenges of South Africa. What's distinctive about this program is it's co-created and co-implemented by UNIWIDER, the National Treasury in South Africa, and many other developing partners. The program seeks to improve the interface between research and policy by fostering partnerships between experienced academics and government policies specialists. Too often research on the South African economy is focused on diagnosing the problems, but stop the thought of giving policymakers like myself practical suggestions. It is this that ESSETAID is suited with. Phase two of the ESSETAID project differs a lot from phase one in a couple of aspects. So we are bringing in different work streams. We have drop sum, we are adding the reform implementation work stream. We are also adding in some partners, so we have additional funders that found value in the program. And broadly, we are hoping that the interface between policymaking and collaborative spaces between the work streams could actually be strengthened. I think that for us, it's quite important that phase two also enhances the skills and capacity, not only of policymakers, which is almost a first thought and idea. But I think our young academics can learn quite a lot from the international academia and specifically the mentorship that we have put in place from the academic leads in the work streams. And hopefully that synergy will create a pipeline of future policymakers that believe in evidence-based. One of the things that makes me very excited to participate in phase two of ESSETAID is that evidence-based policymaking could not be more relevant in this space, particularly given how long-standing poverty, inequality and unemployment challenges have been in the country. It presents a very unique opportunity because not addressing these socioeconomic challenges has long-term impacts, not just for long-term economic growth in South Africa, but essentially the fabric of South African society and the gains that South Africa has made post-democracy. There was a lot of really interesting work done in phase one, and so some of the lessons come from sort of deepening that interesting work. There was a lot of interesting work around the tax administrative data. And so with phase two, I think the hope is to deepen that work, to perhaps bring in some other data, and then to strengthen the collaborations across the first three work streams in particular, but across all of them in working with that data and so in developing this cross-cutting data stream. The program will build on the past success of innovative approaches. It will expand the infrastructure for administrative data and build research capabilities around the use of data to explore topics. I've been involved in SA Tide for a number of years, and I can see the value that the program has for the research community. There's very few economic data labs in the country, and there's very few that make administrative data available. And so I think there's a huge public good that the SA Tide program brings, and that's why I stay involved. What really excites me about the program as a policymaker is being able to see your written work find actual expression and move it all the way through its implementation, which isn't very common across government. So it's been really wonderful to be able to partner with the people that we've been able to access through SA Tide to make sure that this work actually gets going. SA Tide phase two is very valuable for us as policymakers. You know, this really is trying to create that bridge between academia and policy. A lot of the work that goes into these research articles is directly beneficial for us as policymakers. I've always thought to make my work useful, but this project is designed to actually work with people in government who are working extremely hard to implement policies that make lives better for South Africans. And we do research together and we build capacity together. We learn lots from them, they learn lots from us, and we try and design policies that are realistic to the policy milieu but also are in line with what South Africa looks like. That's an incredible privilege to do that. I think that the program has been incredibly successful from phase one and that's a very compelling reason to do something again, right? If it works. So I think phase one was very important in a number of aspects. One, we were able to produce really timely, really important research that informed how we think about certain policy questions. Some critical outputs in that regard are things like fiscal multipliers and a lot of very interesting research came out in that regard. And that was very important and quite topical in the context of the macro-fiscal debate. So that's one reason. The second is the kind of capacity building we were able to do in a relatively short amount of time, which I think is incredibly important for the way that institutions function and how they're able to sustain themselves. Creating knowledge, sharing knowledge, and strengthening knowledge are very much our mandate or mission. An essay type absolutely reflects that. And that's why it has a lot of value for me as a director, if you're any wider, that we're doing something exactly on our mission, but on the ground in South Africa. We achieved a lot in phase one, which means that we set a high, very high bar to meet in phase two. Economic reforms as set out in South Africa's economic reconstruction recovery plan are a crucial way to deliver that inclusive economic growth for all citizens here in South Africa. And I strongly believe that this next phase of the program can be a part of making those ambitions a reality.