 Good morning to you all once again. I would like to thank you for joining us for the Southern Africa Towards Inclusive Economic Development SA-Tide program phase two launch. It is indeed an exciting time for SA-Tide as it looks to bring in new areas that have emerged as key policy priorities in South Africa. So just a little bit of background on SA-Tide. It supports policy making for inclusive growth and economic transformation in the Southern African region. This has been achieved through original research conceived and produced in collaboration between the National Treasury of South Africa, the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research that's UNU wider and many other governmental and research organization in Southern Africa in South Africa and the region. So the program has been implemented partly or implemented partly with funding from the EU in the second phase. The program is pleased to announce another partner in the UK's Foreign Commonwealth and Developmental Office. Now a key aspect of the program is to encourage networking and discussion amongst those involved in policy processes across the participating organizations and civil society to really bridge the gap between research and policy making. That's why we thought that it would be no better way to introduce the second phase of the SA-Tide program with a topical discussion. So we will in due course hear more of what phase two is all about, the phase two program is all about and what it will all entail when we chat to our panelists and speakers a little later on. I would like now to call upon the Honorable Minister of Finance of South Africa, Mr. Inok Gondogwana, to give us his the opening remarks and a brief introduction is that Mr. Gondogwana was appointed Minister of Finance of the Republic of South Africa on the 5th of August in 2021. He holds an MSc degree in financial economics from the University of London and is the member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, the ANC since 1997. Prior to his appointment as the Minister of Finance, Mr. Gondogwana was the Chairperson of the Board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and Chairperson of the ANC's Economic Transformation staff committee. Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Minister. Thank you, Program Director. Good morning, High Commissioner Antoine, it was nice discussing with you, ladies and gentlemen. Today we launched the second phase of SA title. This follows a successful first phase of the program that was rolled out between 2017 and 2019. The program seeks to improve the interface between research and policy by fostering partnerships between experienced academics and government policies, especially to respond to CUE policy gaps. I was told, Mark Swearing, when I'm going to come back to the point that's why I was told here I said something. I'm going to come back to that. Too often research on the south of the economy is focused on diagnosing the problems, but stop thought of giving policymakers like myself. Particle suggestions. It is this that SA title is served with. In its first phase, the program was able to respond to the sudden and critical challenges created by the COVID-19, as well as informed thinking on long standing issues of inequality, poverty, and stagnating growth. It just says economists tend to talk about macroeconomic vulnerability, volatility in different ways. But there's something which literature which also suggests that these ills, inequality, poverty, and unemployment can also be sources of macroeconomic volatility. It's quite important that we look into that. With regard to COVID-19, the researchers rapidly produced to inform government interventions. SA title was able to provide technical research support to operation for Internet. A key policy initiative jointly implemented by the national treasury and the presidents. Allow me to briefly contextualize the policy challenges faced by South Africa, which phase two of the project will help us address. South Africa's economic challenges are well documented, while much progress has been made to improve the performance of the economy since 1994. Much of the progress achieved in the earlier period of democracy could be derailed, if not derailed. The economic stagnation of the past decade, coupled with the impact of COVID-19, mean that much of the progress achieved in the earlier period of democracy could be derailed. This is of concern as low economic growth and plentiful poverty and inequality, while high income inequality aggravates social divisions and poses a risk to long-run economic growth. In addition to the domestic issues were also faced with global challenges, such as climate change. I want to come back to this point in a moment. Thus, in considering the various options available to address these challenges, policymakers must, at all times, be informed by high quality research. The best policy research requires a wide and diverse network of researchers. This includes international scholars and collaborations with public servants at the core phase of implementation. This ensures that research can inform policy debates. In addition, the program focuses on including both young scholars and the co-authoring of papers by policymakers. Novel data and analytical approaches will be further explored in phase two. 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. The essay type phase two will continue to work alongside decision makers to build the evidence base for improved policy making. The key areas of phase two will include among others, enterprise development for job creation and growth, public revenue mobilization for inclusive development, structural transformation, labor markets and inequality dynamics. Micro-physical analysis and policy modeling. Food, energy and water in a context of climate change and reform implementation. That's a good work. But we're not having tea. We added one or two tasks with Kumar. It does not mean it's him who says, okay, we'll include those two as part of these key tasks. What are these two? The first one is climate change. That's why I go to know that you are here, Mark. The first one is climate change. I think this issue is becoming a critical challenge for us. Mark will be surprised when knowing me and we die. I can tell Mark that Devin has taught me a number of things. I'm coming closer to you. Climate change is going to be a critical aspect for us. We, Rudi and them, are working with a number of what is called IPG group, which are international partners. And that's going to require us to do a couple of things. I'm getting a bit on this matter because I'm beginning to, in coming closer to you, Mark, I'm beginning to reconceive my own thinking. I was saying, look, we've got commodity, which is a nice facility and so on. But in terms of impact on employment and poverty, it's less effective than experts assess us, the mining company and power station. Well, then we must look at is not only a climate change as an environmental issue. We must look at climate change as an alternative economic developmental. What does that mean, for instance, from Pumala, where we're going to the state power station? What kind of economic development do we need to know about? That's a kind of reform agenda. Climate change thinking you guys must help us to do. And secondly, to say, how do we as a nation, in part of adaptation and mitigation measure, build resilience? If you look at the, I mean, Devon to me is an eye open because in 2019, you had a similar class in Devon. They've come back in a much scale. And we kind of did a patchwork when we're making our response there. We're not saying how do we make sure that we build resilience in Devon so that when the clouds come back, the clouds come back, we're in a better position. So that is the first agenda item. The second agenda item I'm adding is not me. I was just discussing with Pumala, some of the challenge I'm facing, I'm facing strikes, I'm facing everything. I used to organize strikes, but now people are organizing. So one of the things I went on discussing is the, with the nuances in the form of government housing financing. It's a trick in the sense that it says, they don't say, give us existing institutions. They say, you know, one alternative, which will break the market. I was then saying to Pumala, can we talk to Habitat International and other institutions to help us think this issue through. So these are some of the burning questions that make my life difficult. I was saying on TV every year that the president, I didn't notice the president noticed that I've lost my hat. So I look forward to engaging with research findings. I challenge the researchers to continue to provide either more nuanced reflections of the problems or possible solutions. Quality policy choices are informed by quality research. In closing, we wish to thank our implementing partner, the United Nations University. I don't know, I don't, I don't know how to pronounce the other things. So that's why I end there. And the donor is willing to support us on this journey. We'll support the next phase. You've indicated, come on to support the next phase of essay type by providing areas of international benchmark or operating procedure and best practices. Exposed to the relevant international academic fora, ensuring that the research produced is rigorous and otherwise academic quality. We appreciate, we're appreciative of the collaboration with the university. It was established, it has established a reputation as one of the world's leading development economics research institutes. It has an extensive international network of world leading development economics researchers with experience operating in the context of developing countries and emerging economy. And I can attest to this as I was talking to Kumali and say, oh, no, no, some of our international expect in some way. So they're going to be help us to share that internet, we will share with us that international experience. With those few words, we wish to thank all of you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Honourable Minister Godongwana. You have indeed given us a number of points to ponder on in our conversation a little later on. And hopefully that the second phase of these eighties will make your life a little less difficult and you'll stop losing here. We're hoping so. So, a very big thank you to you, Minister. I would now like to call upon Mr. Anthony Phillipson, the High Commissioner of the UK to South Africa. Mr. Phillipson joined the civil service in 1993 and began his career in the department of trade and industry, where his posts included private secretary and then principal private secretary to the Secretary of State. That's in 1996 to the year 2000. After four years in the embassy in Washington at first secretary trade policy and then Chancellor. Chancellor Global Issues 2000, that was from 2000 to 2004. He returned to London as the prime minister's private secretary for foreign affairs from 2004 to 2007. He then moved to the foreign and Commonwealth office as the head of the Iran Co-coordination Group, that's between 2007 and 2010. And in 2011 in April he was appointed the High Commissioner to Singapore, a post he held until April 2015. And in June 2021, Mr. Phillipson was appointed High Commissioner-designate to South Africa. He took up that post in July 2021. Please do join me in saying thank you very much indeed. They obviously didn't get the memo that I find it exhausting to have my CV read out makes me feel. I really don't feel that old. Anyway, it's a great pleasure to be with you this morning and I'm absolutely delighted to be doing this in partnership with the Minister of Finance. And it was wonderful to have the chance to talk to you and your team just before this about a number of important priorities for us to take forward together. I'd also like to say many thanks to those who joined us here this morning and I think we're also joined by some people who are watching the streaming of this event. So good morning to them as well. As the Minister said, and this has been remarked, we are gathering to celebrate the launch of essay tied phase two. I did a radio interview this morning and they asked me what tide stood for so towards inclusive economic development and it's kind of what it says on the tin. But it's wonderfully exciting to be able to launch this along with the National Treasury, other partners from the government of South Africa and indeed the UN University or UNU wider and we'll be hearing from them in a little bit. As is mentioned, this is phase two. The reason I think we're very excited about this is we think we can build on phase one. This is not the first essay tied program and that first phase in our view showed excellent results in terms of the production of vital analysis on the policy response to COVID-19. Also advances in tax data for South Africa as well as policy recommendations on how South Africa can become a lead player in renewable energy in the region. And again, if I can just endorse the Minister's remarks about the imperative of using programs like this to advance our agenda on climate change, the UK along with France, Germany, the EU and the US signed a really important partnership with South Africa in November last year to deliver a just energy transition. And I think the research that will come out of programs like this is going to be fundamental to our ambitions in that space as well. So we're really looking forward to building on that momentum in phase one as we look to develop phase two and support South Africa's ambitions to create inclusive economic growth across all parts of the South African economy. 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. I'm very pleased and proud that the UK can be a partner along with others with South Africa in that enterprise. We want to support the successful implementation of the economic policy reforms that the government has set out. We want to do that through, again as the Minister commented on, supporting quality policy relevant research, driving dialogue and debate around topics crucial for the South African economy like job creation, structural transformation, energy and of course climate change. And I'm very excited to see where the next few years take us including through enhanced investment opportunities for UK companies. We are the biggest investor in South Africa. We are also the biggest investor in future sectors like renewable energy. And this program of work will continue to set the business environment in the context for more investment from the United Kingdom. I'm also looking forward to the panel discussion today and hearing from those on the panel to help us understand how South Africa can maintain its positive momentum around their reform agenda including through implementing SA tie two. We want to see how those reforms can target poverty reduction. We want to see how they can ensure that growth is inclusive and that we ensure that there are opportunities for all. A key question in our mind is around sequencing, which reforms are going to be the most catalytic, which are going to be the most cost effective and therefore where should we start in terms of building and then sustaining momentum around the economic growth agenda. And I very much hope that those on the panel today will help us to get stuck into some of these issues and form a good basis for the further evolution of the SA tied phase two programs. In closing, I'd just like to say that we're very grateful for the partnership that we've been able to develop with the National Treasury. Delighted again that the Finance Minister was able to join us this morning and thank you to his excellent and inspiring teams who work with us on this program and will continue to look for ways to engage to strengthen our technical and policy relationship. Through SA tied phase two we're also looking forward to working with the EU as well as with other South African government departments such as the South African Revenue Service over the coming years on this vital agenda. Finally, I'd just like to say an enormous thank you to the team at UNU wider including Kunal who we'll hear later from about the program and Dominic for helping to make all of this happen. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much again for letting me say a few words. My very best wishes to you all. Thank you. Thank you very much High Commissioner. We now move on to our conversation with our panelists. We will seek to unpack the big question of today which is the challenge of economic inclusion in South Africa and the need to implement structural reforms. We know that a series of structural reforms are being envisaged by the South African government to enable faster more inclusive growth by improving access to reliable electricity, water and sanitation services, enabling cost effective digital services, promoting the green economy and supporting industries with high employment potential such as tourism and agriculture. But as we all know the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spanner in the works and we've seen the GDP numbers not being quite satisfactory and we are then faced with a difficult task going forward. So our panelists do have that difficult task of addressing some of the issues that have been put forward and we'll try and put forward some solutions which we will all try to ponder on going forward. So I would like to call upon Numbu Yokuma. She is the Chief Director of Microeconomics at National Treasury. Murray Lampratt, NRF Chair in Poverty and Inequality Research and Director of the Southern Africa Labor and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. Rudy Dix, the Head of Project Management Office in the Presidency and Professor Vosley-Goumerde, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Development and Business Sciences at the University of Ngumalanga. We're to kick things off with you. We know you've been quite instrumental with Operation Voolingela. That is a joint initiative between National Treasury as well as the Presidency. Now this unit is meant to accelerate the implementation of key reforms but as we know there has been a lot of frustration I think that government is just too slow in driving structural reform. So I think to kick things off, where is Operation Voolingela at the moment? We have about 26 reforms of those. We have five that are completely completed and we have an additional 18 I think that are progressing well and on track. We have two that we think are sort of critically engaged in those in the energy space and we're looking for additional interventions that we've been waiting to make. And I think we just have one or two additionally where we are paying close attention and we think there's some risk attached to some challenges in the implementation. But overall we think that the reform agenda is progressing well. The overwhelming guarantee of the reform that I have completed with all of that that you say all from the community. We have two out of those. Raising the company, self-generation and licensing threshold to actively make a what-sets that doesn't even matter from these people for ways in which we can steep up the actual on-the-world implementation of that reform. And the second one would be the spectrum. Initially there was some concern that pending litigation might influence the outcome of that option, but that has since been resolved and we look forward to better broadband access around that. All right, what are some of the things learned over this period? It's not something I'm just trying to say. I think I think the many programs in government of this nature as we all know and I will deal with these things is tough tonight. This is like in a sense what you're saying is that things are not going as planned and we're designing an innovation to make it go as planned to come along. That requires a little bit of an analytical life. So the first thing is that it's not so easy for programs that are shared across government to work successfully. The two toughest and center of government departments, national treasury and presidency working together is quite important. I mean it's unusual that you work on a program of this kind and I think that's important. I mean I think it's been tough in initially getting the reform program through to implementing departments. Departments who are responsible because remember what we are doing. We are not implementing, we are designing an intervention to support implementers and we're trying to provide technical assistance, leadership, you know, ensuring that there's consistency around policy, delivery mechanisms that has to happen. And so of course it's important to understand that it's not us delivering, it's them that's delivering and therefore you need to work with them to be able to do that and that's quite critical. And so I think over the, I mean we just recently had a reflection meeting with the president for example and I mean the one positive thing that we did reflect on is that many ministers and the bureaucracy in government have been quite open in supporting over reforms. So initially as you can imagine there was quite a bit of reluctance and saying we're doing the work but in actual fact now I think there's just an openness of seeing what's important for reform. And I suppose so that's important in terms of an impact. I think from an important thing because your title says inclusive growth and economic reforms. I think what's critical is that if we don't do these reforms, sentiment impact on investment, you know, being able to grow the economy is fundamentally what we want at the end of the day. So you want to see positive economic outcome and growth. And so for us I think some of the stuff that we've done and put a bit of speed into as provided a really positive sentiment from an investment point of view, from an internal growth point of view and the two incidents that, two examples sorry that who you had mentioned are good examples. I mean we've now opened up the telecommunication space. This has been something that's been around for 15 years right, not five years, but getting to five quite soon and that's the implication. I mean this is a significant reform that allows for tens of billions of rounds of investment, you know, being able to utilize spectrum allocation in a particular way, moving people or from analog from digital, from analog to digital, you know, that frequency dividend in the 700, 800 megahertz. So critical, massive investment, bringing down cost for consumers, bringing down cost for low-income households, opening access for markets and a whole lot of different things. Similarly to the energy space that yours speaks to, the implication is massive, private sector investment, reforming our energy markets in a manner that allows for much more competition and bringing the price down of energy and that's quite important as you can see the significant increase on that. So of course again about investment, so cheaper, accessible, you know, energy is quite important given that we've been 15 years trying to address the issue around no change, so hopefully that's part of the stuff going forward. So I think it's quite a lot of lessons to learn and I think that for us and we will correct me, for us going forward what we want to look at is not just doing the reform for the sake of reform, but it's about developing an inclusive economy and ensuring that we have an impactful intervention that supports growth and employment at the end of the day. That's important. Thank you so much, Marie. And to you, Marie, we know that you've been quite instrumental in the SA5 phase one, particularly under the in-quality workstream. So what are some of the insights maybe that you can give us when it comes to addressing the question that you're supposed to do? Yeah, I think that's a really good question because both the government policy document that Pulland-Leller then seeks to implement and SA5 Tired does key off the fact that we have structural problems in this country that have led us to be non-inclusive and our growth path to be stifled and non-inclusive and not to be performing to our potential as an economy and a society. And the SA Tired program has then sought to provide a lot of research and evidence into how lives work for South Africans in my workstream in particular, but then also how the economy works in terms of the actors. How do firms behave? For example, we've made great use and increased accessibility to the tax data in our country that gives us an insight into firm behavior that this country just doesn't have anywhere else. And it's absolutely crucial because if you want to understand, if you want to give some meat to this language of structural constraints or factors inhibiting our inclusive growth, you've got to get stuck in and understand how the economy is working to be non-inclusive and how our education systems work and how our health systems work and the entry into the labor market works to be non-inclusive. And I think we've done a lot to show that it's a very daunting challenge and let me just sharpen that point and then stop for now. For example, the policy document says that we have to kick start growth again. Post COVID, we have to kick start growth again. So there's an emphasis in short term, let's get growth going again. In the longer term, let's make sure that growth is transformative and inclusive. The dilemma we face is we're kick starting an economy post COVID that needs climate change adjustment, as the minister said, and has been non-inclusive. And so coming out of the SA Tide work is a challenge to all of us really to try and think harder about this bridge between kick starting the same old growth process again, which we all acknowledge needs to change. The minister said that climate change implies a different economic strategy and the longer run imperative for transformation, etc. So I guess one of the lessons for me from the SA Tide program is that you've got to ground your policies on how life looks from the firms. If you want to regenerate exports, which is a big part of all the strategies, you've got to understand and the emphasis on small and medium enterprises, that's the inclusive part of inclusive growth. Well, at the moment, the economy doesn't work like that at all. And it's not really good enough to say, okay, let's have policies directed at the SMMEs. Well, how are they going to work? There's a theory of change component that's needed to link people and small enterprises into the economy. And it's very hard because you've got quite a concentrated locked up formal sector. Similarly, we've got a country with incredibly high unemployment rates. And if you don't think about labor markets from the point of view of those people and what they are and how they battle to get into the labor market and the constraints that they face. So all of the infrastructure language in Will and Leila, the public transport, the energy, these are all very good issues. Nobody would disagree with that prioritization in contemporary South Africa, but the devil's in the detail. Energy for whom? Infrastructure for whom? Public transport for whom? Housing for whom? And I think we're getting some of that sort of micro detail out of the research that we're doing. And we need it to bridge this chasm between short-term regeneration of a growth path that hasn't worked and somehow it's going to turn in the medium run into transformative growth path. Thank you very much, Marie. Procometa, I've been secretly looking at you, but not in your head to a number of points that Marie raised during his reply. Do you want to add to what Marie has said? Greetings, everyone, and thanks, program director. Maybe not to add per se, but I think one of the points that's coming out from the three input so far is the importance of appropriate policy. So Rudy talks about consistency in policy, and I think this is one of the key issues that requires attention. And my contribution in relation to that is that we seem to now have policies that we need in a whole range of areas, particularly in the economy, but social policy seems missing. And I think it's a very critical issue if I talk about inclusive development. And social policy, as a set of interventions for improving well-being, improving quality of life, has a role in the economy as well, has a role. I mean, it's got its own various functions, productive reproduction, distributive protection, and my most favorite one, nation building. So I do think that maybe there's an area that we've not really paid enough attention to, particularly in the past perhaps 10 years. So it's not that there were never efforts to come up with a comprehensive social policy in South Africa. And just to clarify, as Rudy says, policy consistency, when we talk about social policy, it's slightly distinct from social protection which we have, and it's quite comprehensive in South Africa, and also distinct from social security. Of course, all those reforms become part of a comprehensive social policy. And I think this is one of the critical areas. Marie talks about transformative role in the economy, social policy also has that role. Leading scholars talk about transformative social policy, because it can transform the productive structure of the economy, can transform social relations, can transform various aspects, including the labor market relations and so forth. So I do think this is one of the areas that perhaps we may need to be paying more attention to again. Thanks. And I think one issue here is the mismatch between policy and implementation. I think this is a question to the panel. And it sits at the core of a lot of our problems here in South Africa. We know that the minister did mention a lot of the challenges that he's facing. So policy and implementation, how do we, as a country, overcome this? We do want to take a step. Look, I mean, so I don't have an answer for you. But hopefully, in the next two years or so, as we continue with OB, we'll be able to share some more of the lessons that we've learned in implementation. So I think one of the really powerful things that can come out of this experiment is how do you actually bridge that gap? How do you restore state capacity while still delivering? Because there's this idea or this conundrum, which is you're lacking state capacity, so you can't deliver. So you can't have a really ambitious reform agenda because you're going to disappoint everyone with the outcomes. But if you're in a situation where South Africa is, you can't not be trying to make progress against that reform agenda. So hopefully, we'll be able to come back in a year or two with some of the lessons that we've learned, and maybe ways in which either the structure of the way in which OB works can be replicated to other areas to help support implementation across the group. So there's always a useful lesson that we talk about. I mean, I sometimes baffle about why there's a sense of a lack of implementation or a lack of urgency in implementation. And of course, there's a whole body of critique against government's failure to do that from all aspects of society, from economy to safety and security, who particularly explains this very well in many of his opinion pieces and the work that he does. It just baffles me because in 2020, when COVID hit us, we were able to mobilize ourselves in the most effective and the most impactful way. Now, it took a crisis, which was the health crisis to get us to act in a manner that we should act every single day. And this is just something that I kind of figure out why is it that we kind of like now, if we had two reverse games, we went on two reverse games again, right? We were in fifth, one talks about it when we started. Now, out of that in the delivery of the response to the COVID pandemic, I was very fortunate because I was right in the center. And a lot of those things that you see today being implemented are, as a result of us being able to pull together different departments, different stakeholders, private sector unions, community organizations into a conversation on what is the most appropriate response measures and how do one get those polar responses done? SRD was born out of that. I mean, somewhat, there can be a critique against that we're creating a highly dependent, unemployed working age adult community that's supposed to be looking for employment, but the fact is that you had close to 10 million people that were not able to earn any form of income. But in the design of that, I mean, there's a history of that, I mean, there's a history of that because when we were sitting with Mario, and we were looking at all design things, we did this all in a matter of days, by the way, not months or years, in a matter of days. So on Tuesday, we would say, actually, Mario, can you assist us in developing a response around how we can get food to allow income households that have lost income, right? And can we develop a voucher system for that? Can we meet with retailers around how we can disperse that? To Thursday saying, actually, Kevin is saying, actually, we don't support this. We don't like people being given vouchers, people should be given income to decide what they should buy. On the Monday, they're after designing an intervention. This is all literally seriously, okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit about days, but certainly within weeks of doing that, right? That was the kind of no. So I do think that we have a history of being able to implement an impact, right? I mean, only came out of the crisis. We basically said this is an opportunity where we developed the economic and reconstruction recovery plan. And part of that is that while there's a health response, there's a social response, there is a response. See? Okay, so Vio reminds me, Vio constantly reminds me I talk too much, so I think she's telling me I'm talking too much. So I think that again, that was a kind of economic response. So I do think there's experiences of how we were able to respond to a crisis, if only that we can see low economic growth or no economic growth and massive unemployment and social inequality as a crisis and respond in the very same way. I think that would really, and I'm just saying, I mean, I think from, probably both of us in terms of the center of government, I think that the president and ministers do see the importance of developing a crisis response to some of the conversations that we're having right now. And so the urgency, the ability to coordinate, ability to bring together and develop our holistic and response to all of this is something that I think that MSN brings us together and greater emphasis and speed and ability to live is something that I think we are looking at. We are doing, by the way, not looking at it. We are doing it. And there's a lot of critique about it. So that's fine. I mean, we have to fall on our swords and say, ah, okay, I know this is not happening, but I think what we're learning from that is an ability to be able to hone in on this user resources, partnerships and stakeholder engagements, developmental partners, Anthony, for example, and others in the global world that are able to help us in specific interventions. These things are all going to be important for us. I'll just add a very quick point though. One of, so I really like Rudy's point about what happened under COVID. And I think one of the key points there, besides the fact that it is responding to a crisis, there's a lot of evidence around the world that it takes some sort of war or crisis or something to get economies and societies to confront structural challenges that they have, particularly inequalities. But the response is then has a common cause. I guess that's the point that I want to feed in to the discussion. It's a shared understanding of what these structural constraints are and also what they mean. So what sort of society are we trying to build if we're trying to break structural constraints? What sort of society are we trying to create? An inclusive society, an inclusive economy for an inclusive society. I don't think we've got the issues completely settled at the level they need to be settled about what that means in the country. And so we've got a structural fiscal deficit as well that we worry about. And if we just focus technically on that, but we leave unresolved a bit about what does this society have to be inclusive of all of us and do we benchmark all of our progress from the outset, from now, in terms of its inclusivity. So I think that there's a sort of, there's a coherence at the common cause, but I don't see that we've completely sustained in the post-COVID period. I think Rudy's completely right that we've achieved immense things through that moment. And even in the engagements with the social partners, if you think at that COVID moment regenerated the discussions within NEDLAC around our responses. And that continues to this day. Not that people agree with each other anymore necessarily, right? Because there's not that immediacy. And Vussie wasn't actually getting the days much wrong, maybe a day or two here or there. So the processes I think really you have changed and we've got an opportunity. I'm not sure there's the commonness of purpose that the president speaks about at the highest level. I'm not sure it filters back in. Thanks, Marie. So there's a question, I think, from Petrovat Rudy is saying and what you're saying, Marie. Could it be that actually our challenge in South Africa is not necessarily lack of capacity? You know, you can never have enough of capacity, I think, anywhere else in the world. So you'll have some some weaknesses here and there. So government has been experimenting through Project Bullingela, the district development model, and other interventions much earlier. And when that happens, you see some improvements. So again, it raises the question whether is it really the issue of state capacity? When we talk about state capacity, maybe it's about four or five different types of capacities. So capacity to implement, obviously very critical, capacity to lead, ideas, what else is there? You need a particular set of skills at different levels in government. So the skill set, for instance, that you need a tenational level may not be very useful at a local level. Similarly, the provincial level. So I think maybe this one of the issues that we may need to look more closely again at whether do we really have a state capacity problem in South Africa? You could also think of state capacity in terms of whether you know, they had count the number of people in the public sector in relation to, say, 100 people in a state or 100 economically active people in society. These are some of the measures that the World Bank uses to test to check capacity in government. And I think if we look at all this data and I've done some of these numbers myself, it may be that we don't really have this particular challenge. Again, people are well remunerated in the public sector compared to anywhere else in the world. I think in South Africa, you know, even above the United States of America, from my numbers far above China, obviously, and many other countries. So I think there's a question around that. And it may very well be that maybe it's the way we've organized the state, the way maybe government in particular is organized. So the district development model is a different approach to pursuit of development, of economic development, and so forth. Similarly, in the sense you're changing the approach, you may be reorganizing government differently. And maybe there are lessons that are going to come out from these experiments, I think, as you said. So I think it's one of the issues that is not really in my mind resolved that we have a capacity constraint in this government. I don't think really there is a shortage of capacity. Of course, there'll be areas maybe in local government where you need, you know, engineers, you need a particular skill set that may not be there. Thanks. No, we'll just point a spot on, I think. And when you were around in government also, I mean, organizing the way that you respond to... Yeah, putting one on the spot. I'm trying to avoid that history that was in government. No, but that was an important history because it was an easy way. If one looks back, there was a significant amount of implementation after all sides of kind of slow progress and growth and getting ourselves organized. Right? And I think in that, in that particularly sense, I think your point is spot on. I mean, what we're doing is experimenting with the way we organize government. And so there's this debate around the center of government, which is the point that your experience would be important, because the center of government in coordinating its delivery function, its policy coordination, it's ability to get everybody around an idea of what needs to happen, and then designing it to happen is something that I think we've lost over many years. So, in a sense, I mean, many of you would, you know, you of course engage with departments all over the show and you get a sense of, ah, okay, human settlements have no idea what, what, and sanitation you're doing, although the functions are quite important and intricate. Right? And that's, I think, what is lost over the last many years is that the ability to be able to organize around a common intervention has been lost. And then there's this level of decentralization. Mark and I have done some work on this stuff, right? And potentially they argue that there isn't around that because it was important to ensure the promotion of corruption and all of the different things. Right? So, I mean, Mark and that team have been saying that that may be the reasons why, but I do think that your point of spot, I think there are pockets of where there are no capacity. I mean, I think that's quite clear, but I don't think there's a sense of a general lack of capacity that is there. There's sufficient civil servants to be able to do that. It's how one organizes them in a way that can support delivery. And I think the problems that we see is that we're at a risk of this to experimenting because we think we're going to, we always think we're going to fail. So, we think of failing before we even implement. And I think that kind of response is something that we need to move away. We have to develop it in a way that says when we do fail, it's a positive response. So, I just come back to that one example, right? I mean, the genesis of the S or D grant, which is right now, this 350 thing, that's potentially is going to, I don't want to say this, right? I'll keep quiet. But the genesis of the S or D grant was a food voucher, right? I mean, that's how we started out. And we did a whole lot of work. By the way, it's still there. I mean, we designed this thing and it's on the shelf somewhere. If anybody wants it, they can do it. We did it with the payment systems, the SAR people, the retailers, it's all there. And we did this thing at the point of where we're going to implement. And then we were saying, no, it can't happen. So, we changed immediately. So, we didn't sit on it and say, no, we'll defend this thing with our boots on and we'll die with it. And it's important to do that. Similarly, with the other intervention, which was the employment stimulus interventions, I mean, literally, we would believe that when we also initiated and said, and I mean, Kate and I, of course, were part of the process of developing it and implementing it. But many of the programs in the first phase, not many, three or four of them, in the first phase, we said, sorry, guys, your performance were not really good. We're closing you down. And so, I mean, we're not used to that, right? We just throw and throw and throw and hope for the best, right? But I do think Bruce's point is spot on. And I think that's the way that we need to think about it, greater levels of experimentation. And it's okay if you fail. It really is okay if you fail, because you've tried it, right? Don't kind of hang on to what like most of us do in the civil service. We hang on to it forever, right? And secondly, I think the way that we need to organize, and I do argue that I think sometimes it's useful to go back, I tend to do it quite a lot, let's go back to chapter 13 of the NDP, right? And chapter 13 talks about organizing governance and delivery, right? And there are useful issues there around how one talks about a sense of government that coordinates itself around a common program, a common agenda, coordinating policy, and supporting implementation. And I think that points us as always. Can I come in? And I just want to add to that a quick point about why I think then the coherence and what are we trying to achieve become so important in the light of what Rudy says quite rightly that we've got this huge fear of failure. And we keep being too strident about we need to get growth going and then we can get the inclusivity going and those sorts of things. So as an SA Tide project, so this is a little bit of an editorial here, but as an SA Tide project with the National Treasury, Ingrid Willard over there and Iqsan and others were working with the National Treasury to explore some of these anti-poverty policies using simulation techniques, doing good evidence-informed stuff. And we had a range of policies that the Treasury wanted to explore and looking at the impacts in lowering poverty. So that was the objective, which fits within a sustainable society in the growth poverty inequality triangle. And one of them was this SOD grant, which is effective. And then there were other anti-poverty interventions, but then we were also asked to look at a public works program, an employment based scheme. And it didn't do well. It did well, but didn't do well relative to the others. And then the question is, okay, what do you make of that? What do you make of that? Well, our point as the team and even as the Treasury team was, okay, but this is an anti-poverty policy, right? It doesn't do badly. But if we were evaluating a set of employment policies and the implications on households, the other grants wouldn't have done well because it's, you know, you give a grant to somebody that facilitates their job search, facilitates them getting a job. It's indirect. But that's very narrative. Okay, so this slams the employment policies. Well, it doesn't, you know, we argued very hard that the vision that you're trying to implement is one of a complementarity that helps to be inclusive where we want to look at poverty impacts, but the labor market and employment creation is absolutely crucial. And we need to look at complementarities between the policy sets that do that. But the narrative of like, okay, that was bad. And in other fora where the goal is employment creation, these social grants on top of the tree, they do well, but they're not top of the tree. And then we tend to say, okay, we can't do that. And we can't do this. Meanwhile, the narrative is we've got to do both. And we've got to look for the complementarities and the synergies. I just I want to appreciate the the insights that the panel is providing on the subject and getting us thinking. I want to disagree, Professor Goumede up front. When the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evolution was created, you know, in my mind as a young graduate student, it came across very upfront as there's something that we want to see happen in the public sector that's not happening. And the presidency, because they are constrained by electoral cycles, and they need to produce results, they feel that they should get a team in the presidency, that is going to sort of put a bomb on the departments to do what they're supposed to be doing. If you look at William Taylor, I've just been looking at the indicators. And as much as it comes across as economic reform that wants to stimulate certain sectors of the economy to produce fast results. It just also when you look at it, and you think every single one of these indicators should be sitting in national government departments that are supposed to be doing exactly what Voolinda is trying to be doing. So from that perspective, I think that the challenge is with this whole notion of experimentation constrained by electoral cycles that need to produce results within a specific time, because what was the conceptualization around the Department of Monitoring and Evaluation is somewhat similar to Voolinda. The only difference is that President Cyril's own turn to come up with something that's going to generate fast results. And I tend to think that maybe, just maybe, we need to come to terms of the factor, because when we talk about capacity, it's not the absence of warm bodies sitting in offices to get jobs done. Maybe it's a question of adequacy of a capacity. I'm looking at the UK High Commission here and the strength of the whole UK economy is what your Majesty's public service. And I think that's a lot to come to terms of the fact that there's no shortcut developing capacity within the public sector. And we seem to be concerned with the so many challenges that we need to deal with very urgently, and we think that we can just leapfrog over that. And some of that consists in getting smart academics around the room, who academics are principally people who are trying and experimenting with a range of ideas. You know, I'm an academic myself. And when we sit in our coffee rooms and we have conversations about models that are implementing other parts of the world, we enjoy the very idea of dealing with ideas. Forget whether it works or makes sense for policymakers. So every time you get us into the room and ask us our opinions, of course, we are going to enjoy the whole notion of throwing some of our ideas at you. But I'm increasingly getting to the space where I feel that, and maybe the UK High Commission should sponsor something around this about the effectiveness of developing a public sector that has capacity just to deliver. So that we don't have interventions that are intended at helping public sector develop capacity that they should have in the first place. So the adequacy of government departments just doing what it's supposed to be doing is going to take programs out of circulation and you will just have government departments state capacity doing what exactly they're supposed to be doing. And I think that for policymakers, maybe some of us academics should just tell them that, hey guys, relax, there's no shortcut to this thing. You need to take time, put in resources to develop capacity. It may be something that will produce results in 30, 40, 50 years, but at some point within the urgency of all the things you need to do, somebody needs to perhaps communicate that there's no shortcut to this. So maybe take on more seriously the whole question of, with that I stop, the whole question of, let me throw it out there, free education, not just for the deserving but for everybody. I sit in the university sector where you look at throughput rates, edit point in time x, you have hundreds, thousands of students willing to study who cannot study. That's a real issue of capacity. And if government could perceive that as an investment into the future of developing capacity, it really breaks my heart to see the number of university students that drop out. Our students coming to first year and before they get into second year, some of them drop out because they don't have money. Now, I come from a country where I did my degree at three years. It came up with a bachelor's, second-class uppers, and it cost me $300, my whole degree, less than $5,000. And when I came to South Africa in my first year as a master's student, I was at the top of my class. So my degree was not a second-class degree. My contemporaries in South Africa need to come up with $203,000, $500,000 to get the same degree, and they don't, they just fall out. And then it becomes a problem for Larry in question of employment creation and how do we absorb all of that. So they are not shortcuts to this. This is the point I wanted to make, but I disagree with the notion of capacity. Well, I think it's an empirical question. I mean, so that's why I'm tabling it as something that we need to look at. My numbers suggest that it's not really a capacity problem that we're facing in South Africa. Indeed, you know, there are issues around coordination. So there will be specific types of capacities that are needed, that needs to be scaled up. Leadership, you know, I argue more about thought leadership, capacity to implement in some instances. Coordination, I think, very critical. And the point you make about DPME and the National Planning Commission, perhaps, is that they were meant to assist with this coordination. And if you go back to the argument I make, is that maybe the way they are structured, maybe the way they were structured, they were organized, could be, might very well be that it became a constraint, not that there's a lack of capacity itself. So DPME, we understood it as part of the presidency, but it wasn't really in the presidency. It wasn't the presence in the EU. So proximity matters a lot, I think. And that's why maybe projects or experiments such as Voolingera and others may work better because they seem to be closer to the center of government. So you can have these expanded capacities we have as we've heard through DPME, but, you know, these many people didn't have, I think, enough influence, the influence that you need to coordinate was to coordinate. You really need to, each of that influence you need to be seen to be, I mean, we were about 40 in the policy unit in the presidency that you put them in the spot. But, you know, there was a sense that we talked directly with the president, you know, and so when we called the minister, when we called the DG, when we convened, people attended and listened, and, you know, we also listened of course to them. We worked very closely with treasurer, many differences, but we kept working together. And I think it mattered a lot that we seem to be close to the center of government. So I think maybe that's one of the issues that maybe how you structure these institutions in government matter. With regards to capacity building, I mean, we know that government has had institutions, you know, even before 1994, of course, they were transformed in 1994 to build the capacity. Now we've got the National School of Government, which used to be Palam, used to be something, can go back and back. So even in that context, those are institutions that are supposed to be assisting in building the capacity in government. Thanks. So maybe is it working? Yeah, it's working. Okay. I mean, just add it on the capacity. So I think it's quite important because if you think, and I suppose Lucy would, I'm sorry, I didn't get to name, would have to think about think of capacity, not as capacity only limited to the state. And why say that? Because we tend to define it as such, right? And that's a limitation in the way we're trying to construct in the ranking, in this sense, delivery, right? And in our experiment, we said, I don't know whether during the time we pick us, what we have realized is that there are elements of important areas of capacity within the state that we can rely on. But only what we've been experimenting with the last three to four years is drawing on both capacity within the business sector and within the academic sector. So for example, we were told that in our interventions around operational good and data, we have not gone out and brought in people. There are not in the state traditionally, right? They may have something to some research organization, but largely they are business experts or consultant experts in this field. Of course there's a risk involved, but that's important. So for us, when we think of capacity, we need to think of it as a whole of society. We're able to develop in an experimental form, because the public service like this, right? It takes you 12 months to employ someone. And then that person has to jump from so many books and papers and you have to fill it for the entire week. It takes you an entire week to fill it. Then security clear. Now, I mean, I just perhaps I'm over exaggerating, but it is important that you think of the public service generally. And so we need to think again of dynamic relationships with actors in society that has a common agenda in the delivery of companies. And this is what I must, this experiment is what we're doing. Marie will tell you that we have a strong partnership again from the center of government with different universities, institutions, these are institutions in other institutions, for example, around quick research, for example, and partnership sector development. And I think this is something, I mean, let's use infrastructure, for example, Horsesfootland, will tell you that, you know, there's a general lack of project management experience in South Africa. It's completely different. Now, that experience is not great. And it's why, for example, there's a theory that goes around why, for example, we're not able to get projects from design to activity to actual build, because we don't necessarily have an experience or the experience is there, or it's only situated in the private sector. There's a big infrastructure projects are not happening as quickly as it. And so, of course, what is that is to set up a structure that allows for huge amounts of capacity from the private sector coming to assist us. So I think we need to think, oh, that's why I agree with you. I think it's not about the individuals, it's about the way you structure it and coordinate it. And I like, that's what I've got to be thinking on that. The second point, sorry, I just, sorry, the second point is on this notion of, so I think both of you and I are great players to explain that the way that we're trying to do stuff is not to fly in, right? And it's kind of like an external thing. We have to build it as part of a government process, right? So that's why I was saying, when we initially started off, everyone says, what's this for we people, whoa, we don't do it again. Ah, come on, guys, we just leave us to deliver, we're talking about delivering minister and DG and do the same thing that you did them also. It's great work, scoping through it, why it's important. But you're right, I mean, I think the critique is that you need to ensure that this is integrated into the government system and process. So it's not seen as an external thing as an add-on. So what we've done, these are in the performance agreements of ministers and DGs, by the way, right? So we've done that and that's quite important from a bureaucratic point of view. Secondly, in the annual performance plans in other places, like we have to ensure that it's in the, so an APP is basically what is presented to parliament and to government. This is what we're going to do for the next year or five years, right? And so those things are really, very important because when the president then engages with the minister on these or her performance, they reflect against a set of indicators and actions to those indicators that would say, ah, actually, minister, you've not been able to live on this thing. Can you explain to me why? Because you concluded and agreed on an APP with me. That's exactly what does happen, by the way. So I think it's important to understand that what we're trying to do is incubate, develop it, right? Get resources, integrate it into the system and then, of course, it becomes a way of how we live. Government is not always designed for that kind of agility, speed, innovation, partnerships. You know, sometimes when you talk about, have you got a partnership with someone outside? What do you mean? Because generally, when you talk about that, it's about procurement, right? Everybody gets nervous now. We don't want to talk about that, but it's not that. I mean, we've been able to do the stuff fundamentally in supporting the work that you've done and a whole list of different projects that, you know, we can see it's been quite impactful. Without having to talk about procurement in any particular way, all about, you know, obstacles of getting that skill. But I just thought those two points, for your excursing theory, I can see you, those two points are feeling important in the way you understand capacity and integrating programs. So it's not seen as external to what we need to do in terms of delivery. Is it not working? And is this one working? Is that slightly better? Thanks. So the first point is that delivery-type units like Wollendella are not unique to South Africa. And in fact, you find them in many economies that are considered very good at implementing, most notably would be the UK. So I think it's a feature of governments more generally, that you always want to improve delivery and you look for many different ways in which that might occur. So that's the first point. The second one is that specifically in the South African context, Wollendella was meant to do something solve for the kind of failures that DPME, I don't think, was set up to, and so we, one of the things, so you have in some cases, a lack of capacity that is technical capacity in departments because some of these reforms are actually just quite difficult to implement. One of them, for instance, quite technically challenging would be the spectrum auction. So you have those kinds of issues. You have serious issues around coordination. And when you have two departments that just don't agree on a way forward, then you have this kind of policy inertia. But then unfortunately, in the South African context, you have a serious challenge of vested interests that further complicate the policy making space. And then you have some deep seated disagreements at a political level on some of these structural reforms. And that I don't think is something DPME was set up to deal with from a monitoring and evaluation point of view. So I think those are some of the key elements, I think, that Wollendella's had to contend with and why it needed to be the presidency and the Ministry of Finance that collaborated on some of these things. Good morning, everyone. My name is Lara Tonkosi, and I'm an academic from UNICEF's Business School. And my question is directed at Marie's comments. And it has to do with inclusivity when it comes to education. I understand and concur with the comments from the previous president in the audience who talked about access to university and a lot of people ending up dropping out. But I can also say that education has been quite inclusive since 1994, especially if you look at the statistics of graduations and degrees since 1994 and now. So my question then is why is unemployment so stubborn and persistent even before COVID? Because you are having people who have access to education and even to education as far as executive and business education, your MBAs, your MPLs, your pros, grad diplomas in business administration, things like that. And then you also have the government trying to stimulate the economy from the supply side through your policies around transformation. So policies such as your triple BE for instance, but still unemployment remains stubborn and persistent. And then also you talked about SMMEs and issues, tax policies surrounding them. So with the tax revenue proposals for this year, one of them were that corporate income tax decreased from 28% to 27%. Now I can tell you because I teach a cohort of students who have their own businesses and who are always angry about policies around tax when it comes to their own businesses because they say, if the government wants them to create jobs, why are they being taxed so much? Why are they not certain policies that accommodate the fact that they are much smaller than your bigger corporates? And sometimes a lot of the changes to corporate income tax, for instance, they may seem good, but for them they don't really have much of an impact. Thank you. Well, the questions arose in response to something I said. It doesn't mean I've got to answer them. But I'll start. And maybe start with your second set of comments about the SMMEs and the tax policies because it's such a good issue to talk again about programs like SATI. Because what your students tell you and the people trying to start SMMEs, people running SMMEs, that's evidence. That's how they're experiencing the economy. That's how they're experiencing the milieu. That's how they're experiencing the interface with the tax policies. And that's what the data that we try and gather really, at the end of the day, it's representing those people and feeding that into the policy space. And it's a much closer interaction. It's not just actually academics who like to talk and sound out stuff. It's quite a sophisticated, embedded model where the research community feels like it's got a role to play here. But the point is, to some extent, the research is supposed to surface those issues. And there are very good research programs in SATI on both tax policy and on enterprise firms and firm behavior. And so what you're saying, the research is supposed to work out whether the design of the tax policies are really stifling these small enterprises. Because at the end of the day, that's what they are. They're ordinary South Africans coming out of their homes in the morning and trying to run a small business. And that doesn't intersect that well with policy at a big picture level coming down from national government, both small business policies and tax policies. And so bridging that gap and making policy responsive to its actual impacts on people and so, for example, in the South African context, making people also willing to pay their taxes, exploring wealth policy, wealth tax options in the South African environment, in an environment in which we're trying to build the same sort of society. So you can do technical work about the consequences of wealth taxes, but at the end of the day, it works much better in the context of a well-defined policy. So that's the answer. So I'm not denying. In some cases, what I'm saying is that the job in the evidence policy pipeline of the research is to try and surface those issues, not just your guys, but in aggregate. And to put information into the pipeline so that policies can be designed or redesigned so that they don't do that. If we're building an inclusive society, that's a crucial failure that you're surfacing. On the education side, we haven't... Obviously, this is the big question in the country about... The research has shown us quite a lot of things. And obviously, access to education has improved, as you said, and across the board, in a sense, all the way up. There are still extreme inequities in actually what you get. Depending on where you live, which sort of area do you live in, that determines which school you walk into, that determines where you can go in. If you get metric, that's probably a huge achievement in some contexts. In other contexts, you would have battled not to do that. But what you get is very different. And so to some extent, the research is focusing on education for what? Education to empower people to be real participants in our economy and society. And so around government, a lot of these initiatives, even in Willendella, are about the quality of what we're doing as much as the quantity of what we're doing. And then you must assess the quality outcomes, not the quantity outcomes. But at the same time, the research has been useful in also making it clear that education planning for the economy and planning to splice young people into the job market is not just about technical skills. It's not just about doing science and technology rather than doing something else. That's not an empowering narrative for young people. And it's true, we do need, there is a supply of skills issue in this country. But that doesn't mean that every South African going through their education needs to deny what they've got to bring into the system. We need a schooling system that can make each person as the most productive person that they can be for our society. And research shows that. So research cautions us, we do need to do skills planning and skills projecting and stuff. It's very important in a rapidly changing labor market. Absolutely crucial. But it's that's not the only narrative you want to put out there in the education milieu. You want to also tell people that they will be empowered to be the best person that they can be. Okay, thank you. I really would like to take this discussion further on education and what it leads to in terms of contributing to the broader economy. And, you know, I'm quite excited about the points that the two previous speakers have raised. And I would like to go further than that and say, you know, the structural inequalities you spoke of that are there. They it's important for us to to recognize them and to recognize the successes that we've had in trying to eliminate them. And while we recognize as well the failures as you have indicated, and the issue of the number if for an example, we take we look at statistics. The number of graduates grew within the first 10 years of our democracy, they grew I think they quadrupled, I think, and they have grown exponentially up to where we are now. And most of that is black graduates, the previously excluded and disadvantaged. And now if you take that success and try to incorporate and try to build on it to say, okay, now we are having a problem of an economy that is underperforming. I mean, countries that are that have far less resources than us as South Africa are performing much better than us in terms of entrepreneurship, for an example, while we have a better economy than them, while we have better resources than them, what then is it that is a gap or an opportunity there? We have made this success in terms of access to higher education for the black community, because this is where we have the bulk of our second economy within the country. Now, we have university in, okay, for an example, the World Bank has said last year they released a report that said the youth in South Africa are the best hope for entrepreneurship that will take the country forward. That's what the World Bank said last year. Now, if you look at the youth, they are the most affected by unemployment. I mean, more than 60% of them are sitting unemployed. These are people who are at the peak of their productive abilities, and they are willing, and they have the energy, they have something to contribute to our economy, to society. Now, if you look at the youth, we have most of them sitting at university, and they are pursuing their own ambitions. If you take the university entrepreneurship, yes, we are speaking of that a lot, but we tend to look at universities at an institutional level, rather than at community level, where I believe that there is space to cultivate an entrepreneurial culture among the students themselves, among the community, among the staff within the universities, such that the culture within universities is sort of embracing to entrepreneurship. I will tell you this. I have been a business development professional for 27 years now, and about five years ago, I decided to just go back because I was taking keen interest on student entrepreneurship. I went back to university to immerse myself in that culture of student entrepreneurship, so I interacted with students as an entrepreneur, but as a fellow student, so I didn't just become a part of the story sharing, but I became part of the stories themselves, you know? And you would find that my MBA thesis, when I completed it, it was on the entrepreneurial intentions of students at universities. The fears that are there, I mean, we look at entrepreneurship and we're thinking, oh, entrepreneurship, I mean, sorry, about unemployment, and we're thinking, oh, it's horrible. At universities, they are there because they are pursuing an indefinite target that, okay, I want a better life for myself, and I'm hoping that I know that I may not get a job, you know? So that is the biggest driver for entrepreneurship among students at university today. The biggest fear on the other hand is that we have the face of entrepreneurship out there in the economies that they belong to because we know that South Africa is made up of different economies. In those economies, some of the economies, the face of entrepreneurship is still that lady who is sitting on the side of the street with a small table selling vegetables there. Now, these university students, we are encouraging them that seek entrepreneurship, but the fact of the matter is that among their peers, within their communities, within their families, when they get into entrepreneurship, they worry that I will not get the recognition. I will not get, I will not be taken seriously, for an example. So these are the things that the structural issues that they boil down to those issues on the ground. So now, I'm thinking that, okay, as a forum like this, we need to take particular interest in developing entrepreneurship and supporting and taking an advocacy role for entrepreneurship, not just as, but in changing the face because once you change the face, if you take for an example, entrepreneurship and promote it among university students, when they go back to their communities, they are influencers there. When they go back home after a break or during holidays, they are peers. They want to look like them. They want to wear their hair like they wear their hair. They want to dress the way they dress. They want to speak the way they speak. So university students are not just, you know, they are change agents. They are influencers. And on top of that, if we are saying these kinds of things speak of that says entrepreneurship, they don't get respect and so on within their communities or families. It also is part of it is even in the agencies that are supposed to be supporting entrepreneurs that you would find that the general attitude is that, okay, you know what? Entrepreneurs are those people who are not educated maybe or not as skilled or inadequately skilled so they can't be absorbed into the mainstream economy. So these are the shifts that need to happen for us to develop our potential fully in terms of our economy. Thank you. Thank you so much. My name is Jason from the University of Pretoria. Just very quick points. The one is that I think the issue of poverty, the way we've tended in my view to follow through with a narrative of structural poverty, it has limits to it because the reality is that in South Africa most of the poverty is structural but not all of it is structural. But we tend to sort of lump everything together as a structural and that's something that I think we perhaps might need to demystify and deliberately in policy ensure that our target is on both structural and non-structural poverty. That's the first. And the second point is I think on the question of entrepreneurship that has been mentioned over and over again. I think Boussi mentioned about the fact that public servants in South Africa are highly paid. The public service pays well. And there is a positive to that given where the country is coming from. But the negative part to that in my view and considering that there is no other country that you will get paid more in the public sector than in the private sector in the world. The negative part is that this incentivizes entrepreneurship. My colleague mentioned the fact that you have students in university coming through the system and their target, their goal to deal with poverty which is intergenerational for them is to end up in the state. And that's problematic because that's where you get paid. Your pension gets sorted out at your age of 20 and so on. I think that's something that we needed. And then my last point just very quickly is on the issue of inclusive growth. I think that they are key drivers. And I think, Mary, that's perhaps to you. If you look at our vision 2030, for example, was drafted shortly after the 2008 crisis. And it addressed issues as if that was the only crisis that we had, the 2008 crisis. There are several other crises that have come up since it came. One, of course, is the drought 2014 onwards. Then you have the COVID-19 crisis. And in my view, another key driver which I'd like to hear your response to that is actually the fourth industrial revolution where given where we are in our development as a country, we are getting into a point where inevitably we will see our growth GDP numbers looking really good during the fourth industrial revolution. But what is actually producing that well, these machines and robots and so on and not people. So we'll have high levels of unemployment. And yet at the same time, high level of GDP growth given where we are. And that is a major crisis of inequality that we are coming into. And I'd like to hear some response to that. Thank you so much. Well, I can only agree really with the point around entrepreneurship, but then we'll all agree. So in the context of the universities, luckily now there are initiatives for embedding, expanding, right terms here, entrepreneurship in the universities. So both in terms of the curricula, but also the activities that take place. And by the way, the British High Commission, I think is involved in some of these initiatives. There is an initiative of universities in South Africa on intrapreneurial universities that's funded by the British government. So there are initiatives. And I think the point you are making is that these need to be done well. And they must be expanded. So I think I agree with the point really around entrepreneurship. We can do more. We can do better. Yeah, there are many, I suppose, negative implications of higher salaries than wages in the public sector. So you're mentioning one of them, it may be a disincentive for entrepreneurship. But you know, it's a problem also for, it may also be a problem for the fiscals, as planned in the context where you have a shock in the economies we've had with the pandemic. So I do hope this is one thing that is being discussed in government that you do need to look at the wage bill. It's just too high and children really be higher than all other countries in the countries that are doing so well, at least if my numbers are correct. I think about 36% of expenditure goes to wages and salaries, which I think is extremely high inside of it. Thanks. I don't want to talk about wages in the public sector. We don't want to get into trouble, that's all. So let me come in and say a few things about, and I'd like to link your point about structural, not all poverty, structural with your other point then about the fourth industrial revolution. Because in a sense, the key point I was trying to bring to the discussion today is that we do need to understand the actual dimensions of poverty, hard works for people. And so your point about structural poverty are people who are trapped in poverty, who need some sort of structural intervention to escape from that poverty. And there's plenty of international examples to help, and our social grants aren't enough to boost people out of that poverty. But then there's other people who are in this precarious existence, which is part of our labour market, and that's where it links to the point about the fourth industrial revolution, they're in and out of precarious jobs. And they need a different set of interventions. It's not useful to characterize them as structurally poor. They need some sort of buffer that kicks in, that in some senses the unemployment insurance would do in a normal, well, in a different labour market. But in the South Africa, one of the arguments in favour of some sort of basic income support for the economically active, that is means tested at some level is exactly to fulfil the role of the precariousness of life in South Africa. And at the same time, we need to detail this about the restructuring of the economy and the fourth industrial revolution. On the one hand, we can just get all sweaty, armed and think, okay, this is just the computers are taking over and the end of formal employment as we know it. And that's the message that comes to us from international literature on the developed countries. And on the other hand, South Africa and other African economies, a large section of our economies aren't the formal sector of the economy. And we need to know what the structure and texture of our economy really is and how it's changing over time. In other words, how it was South African economy experiencing this fourth industrial revolution. And it's a mixed bag, right? One doesn't want to be a denialist about what one's saying, but it's not the whole story of the whole economy and the whole labour market. And there is a lot of research that's being done both within SA Tide and more generally, about exactly what is driving the transformation of the demand for labour, if you want to put it that way. And I really liked your closure then, that if we assume that it's a fourth industrial revolution of the particular stereotype, then we can't come in with a nuanced position that tries to, and we kickstart growth, right, to link back to my earlier point. Then we're not kickstarting a process that's satisfactorily nuanced to wrap in, to make sure we don't get a particular growth path in which the top end of the earnings distribution and the top end of the income distribution in South Africa are doing particularly well and the very skilled South Africans are doing brilliantly. And the rest are in serious trouble. That's the opposite of the inclusive society we're trying to build. And so all of this discussion about entrepreneurship is not incidental. It's completely at the heart of this thing. We can't just focus on, we've got to understand, okay, what is going on in secondary manufacturing work that Kunal has done some excellent work around our continent, you know, what is really going on? And to what extent is that also subject to the same technological transformation? To what extent can that meet our pressing need for exports? Because it's a more inclusive path, right? So yeah, so I guess that's my response. If I may just, I mean, I think that, sorry, the lady in the, I mean, I think Vous's point is correct. And what you say, Marie, is quite critical. I mean, also we think about employment and business, you know, in a very kind of narrow sense. And that's partly because of part of the way the labor market developed. You've done quite a lot of work on it, Vous also. And I mean, your point earlier on that you made around, you know, self-employment as a percentage of total employment is relatively low in South Africa compared to others, right? I mean, this is not only about informal economic activity, but also formal economic activity. And I think we kind of, you know, we kind of have this binary choice of going into formal employment and then, oh, we all want to be big business, right? But in actual fact, there's a sense of, you know, why are we not able to develop those elements? So how do you adequately monetize access to markets to supply chains? And if you think of it as township economic activity, I want to use one example which we refer to is installation, repair and maintenance. Now, those chaps are women or, you know, they spray paint cars, right? They are plumbers, not formal qualifications. They're electricians, not formal qualifications. But they're self-employed and they have someone else working with them. So I think it's important that we need to think about how one boils onto those opportunities that are there from a self-employment basis that we create a kind of entrepreneurship. And I think our education is an important role that has to play in doing it. On the four-hour point that I want to make, I think that it's, again, doing a point about the change in labor market, it's going to be important. I don't think we're going to see a dramatic displacement in labor. I think what we're going to see is a change in the labor market and the economy and the structure of the economy. I mean, let's just use an example. The digital and tech sector in South Africa, they expect, I mean, there's a shortage of skills. Right now, they require about 65,000 to 70,000 young people working in the digital and tech space for the next three to four years. That's there. And so they're putting in a large amount of money. We have a partnership with them. Some of the big tech firms require people that understand machine coding and a whole lot of different things. This is part of the four-hour art. They estimate that they require labor market. They estimate that they require about 500,000 young people in the next 10 years into the space. This is the four-hour space. This is not a four-hour space in the way we narrowly see it as those only working in the digital. It cuts across the entire economy. It's having to understand how people operate to production, service, and a whole lot of different things. So I think it's just, the structure of the economy is going to fundamentally change the off course in your point. I mean, if you're doing machining and your production, efficiencies needs to increase. I think, of course, there's always a, you know, this economy between labor intensity and high levels of capital intensity. And of course, if labor costs go up, they will tell you that they're going to shift over a period of time to much more capital-intensive production. It's worthwhile. But I think that perhaps it's slightly overplayed. I think there are significant opportunities in the labor market for employment and growth and self-employment in the digital and tech space. Very interesting conversations you have with Microsoft, Amazon, a whole lot of different, Elton, for example, a whole lot of different people in this space who are looking at 10, 15 years from now and what sort of employment business opportunities there are. And I think there's huge potential to actually, that's not from a negative point of view, where we see employment decline in production, for example, but opportunities created elsewhere, which leads us to a point that I think we need to design our various interventions to support the growth in the economy. Because it's not, you know, in the sense of how business evolves. You know, I learned that during my union days that, you know, you can decide on policy as government. But at the end of the day, I mean, I think what we are seeing is significant growth in these particular sectors that are not the sectors that we initially set out when we said we wanted to high levels of industrialization and we want to see, you know, automotive, we want to see, you know, food production and all the different things. Our economy is not going in that direction, unfortunately. It's going into services and to digital and tech and to a whole lot of different other things, social economy, for instance. And so how do we develop and support those kind of initiatives with a policy response that eases for business, but also creates opportunities that are given? Thank you. Good morning to everyone. I hope it's still morning. In keeping in line with the theme of economic inclusivity, in particular, I think earlier on the minister mentioned climate change. So we need a concerted effort to reduce our carbon emissions footprint. So in keeping in line with that, in particular with SCOM, we know that it's planning on reducing its coal generation capacity and also including independent power producers in generation using our utilizing renewables. So within, in that context, the question that arises then, what happens to the workers in those generations, in those coal power plants, how can we then ensure that the just energy transition is indeed inclusive and then it doesn't leave those communities worse off? And not just the just energy transition, but just the just transition in general. How can we ensure that, you know, in transitioning towards a greener, cleaner ecosystem, how do we ensure that, you know, communities are not left worse off? Thank you very much. Morning, everyone. Well, I come from a municipality background. I'm a researcher over there and the challenge that we experience on that level is how do you collaborate, how do research, how does the municipality collaborate with research institutions in order to implement the IDPs because municipalities are the face value of service delivery. And in order to provide services, you must be informed by research and the needs of the community. But then what I have experienced on that level is that there is no collaboration with, for example, I'll make an example, national treasury. The only time you'll see treasury is to fill in financial forms and all these things, financial things. But in terms of engagement with treasury with regards to research in order to get the community involved, get the community involved in order to respond to these IDPs, these are their needs, these are what they wanted. But then in order to, for service delivery to happen, research needs to happen as well. So how do we collaborate research with municipalities at that level? And don't just leave it here because you're gonna just say our goodbyes and then the IDPs need to be implemented every five years. They are projects and these IDPs are more than just repairing roads. These, they must be projects that are research based at the municipal level. So how do you make that connection? Jujina, do you want to respond to the just transition? No, Jujina doesn't want to. Okay, you're going to respond to that one because I mean, we've been working on this one and it's quite an important point. Okay. So thank you very much for raising the point of the just transition and your comments are on point because you speak about the energy transition as well as the other sectors of the economy. And that is a process that's been underway and under investigation before our climate presidential climate commission. We, through the national development plan and the commissioners, we were looking at vulnerability of communities related to how sectors are changing and how climate impacts our economy. And when we set out to embark on an aggressive role of renewables in our economy, we are aware of the vulnerability of not just the coal sector but the value chain linked to the coal economy. And it's also about the people that work in the places where these power stations and the coal mines are situated. So in Poma Langa is a key point in the transition. And when it comes to planning the transition and thinking about what goes into moving our economy towards a green and renewable economy, it's about a multi-stakeholder approach. And a lot of the work of the PCC is around understanding the needs of the communities, the vulnerability of the sectors, and then finding ways to actually grow our economy in a sustainable way. These sound like words. And as I'm saying it, I'm realizing that it actually becomes a part of our core economic response to consider the vulnerability of communities and build programs, not just programs, but economic strategies around how are we going to deal with the fallout. And I think we've been very narrow in our focus on not just coal, because that's the debate. But what we've learned out of the COVID response is that vulnerability is about how our economy deals with shocks. And so there's actually something that we can learn about the COVID response and what we've been talking about today about how do we respond and how do communities get involved in their livelihood strategies. So a lot of what the just transition work is about at the moment is understanding the needs of communities, understanding how this links with the economy and the value chains and trying to get us beyond just the narrow sector approach of trying to look at just the coal sector and what's going to happen with coal workers. Because it's actually bigger than that. It's about the whole structure of the economy and the structural reform agenda. And it means that when we plan the just transition and the energy sector, we're actually going to be have to be very strategic in how we position the role of workers and engage unions. So there is a consciousness in the just transition already. And various government departments are thinking about this planning around this. The DMRE is actively looking at a strategy for the just transition. National Treasury is looking at the just transition and we are talking to each other. So I think the work coming out of the PCC is critical. The work and the IPG and what they're trying to do with the just transition financing means that we have the right policies. And I think it's about planning this transition as well. We are already seeing the just transition play out in the energy sector. So I hope that answers some of the question, but it's an active space and I'm very glad you brought up the topic. Thanks. After this, I'm going to shut up. So it's an active space, but I thought it would be useful to use some good examples of this. So I mean, what we're trying to do is coordinate the response around Komati, for example, one uses a power station. Because you know a design of one uses coal, the design of our energy grid is coal station quite close to a mine. And then there's a supply chain in between that either comes from Johannesburg or somewhere in Malachleni. And I think this is quite important. So just think about it. If we decommissioning right now, which we are, we're going to have to do that as part of our commitments. Komati is first on the list. So what happens? I mean the question would be then what happens to the workers working that coal mine, the power station, but also the entire value chain around because it's billions of rents of people who are dependent on that. And so there's quite a lot of work from both and this is the nice stuff, right? It's quite a lot of work by government across government, civil society, unions, researchers, partners, for example, like UK and others, want to see the just component develop because you can shut it down. And that's it, right? But what happens to the thousands of people that are dependent on that value chain? So again, I think it's important that we keep a close eye, we look at it and see is Komati a good example? And are we able to replicate to Tuka, for example, which is the next one that we're going to have to decommission or Andrina or anyone else? Because I think it's quite critical that we look at it in a way and ensure that the just component is always in there because it's difficult to talk about, you know, we can't just say just, just, just and it doesn't actually happen in the context of high unemployment and high levels of inequality. I'm keeping quiet. Yes, I think it belongs to Vuojo. And there's no treasure in the forms. This is what we're fighting about in government. Now I'm joking. We're fighting about more important things. So I think, I mean, it's an important point, collaboration, I mean across actually, not just between disparities and recession situations in this context, you have a university now in Pumalanga, where I come from, from that university, and, you know, there could be ways to collaborate in research. And that's why I wanted to say something about that, because we have students doing their masters by research, doctoral studies by research, who are actually studying these municipalities and studying the ITPs and various aspects. So I think that the collaboration should always be open. But it's a critical issue, I think, for the rest of society, really, that you do need effective partnerships for inclusive development. So, I mean, we've always known that government will not be able really to achieve what we need to achieve as society. If it pulls off alone, it does have to equate organized labor, business extremely critical, but we're talking about the structure of the economy and changing that structure and creating jobs. So I think it's a broader point, so I'm just welcoming the point that it's something that we do need to take into account the role of effective partnerships in inclusive development. Thanks. I think we have come to the end of our panel discussion, and thank you very much for joining us for a sudden and insightful conversation. I trust that everybody who's here today really did gain some insights into operational really better and what it is currently doing and what it is going to be doing in the future. There's still some roadblocks along the way and hopefully as we, you know, get through the years, things will start to come together for South Africa. We're really in glory and thank you very much for joining us today. And we have come to the end of our program, but before we close things off, I'd like to call up Kunel Singh, he's the director of the UNU Wider. So he'll give us the closing remarks and give us a bit of an insight on what we can expect for the phase two of the essay title, because it's a massive collaboration with the UNU Wider, and we really do appreciate that. And so he's going to give us the importance of this collaboration. Just a brief introduction is that Professor Kunel Singh has over three decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research. He is the author of eight books and the editor of five volumes on the economics and political economy of the development from 2019. He is the director of UNU Wider and he is a professor of economic development, development economics at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. Kunel, Kunel, Kunel, Kunel, Kunel, Kunel, Kunel, Kunel. Minister of Finance, Honourable Enok Konwala, this excellency Anthony Phillipson, UK High Commissioner of South Africa, colleagues and friends. It is my pleasure to address a few concluding remarks to you. Let me start by thanking our excellent panel. I learned a lot actually through the discussion for the engaging discussion and the question and answer session. I also used to express my gratitude to all of you who asked questions at this panel. It was a very lucky debate I thought, and whilst the final discussion was a really nice way to start to launch the second phase of the essay title. As illustrated by the panel today, the essay title program brings together world-class researchers with policy makers to combat poverty and inclusive challenges in South Africa. A big part of what Essaytide does is to engage with the policy-making community as a partner. This is what is distinctive about the program. Tension impact on policies promote economic transformation and curving inequality. Essaytide builds on best practices on policy research and engages the key users of the research, policy makers and technical staff in government departments into all aspects of the program. A key aspect of the program is to encourage networking and discussion amongst people involved in policy processes in civil society, aiming to bridge the gap between research and policy-making. Leading experts at UniWider, which includes also our UniWider non-residency research fellows who are many of them here today, guide the program to research jointly with key staff from the South African government department in particular the national pressure to co-create and co-implement research capacity development and policy bridging initiatives. The first phase of Essaytide was implemented from the 1st of November 2017 to 31st March 2022, so it finished very recently. It led to major contributions in research and policy as outlined in a summary report, a platform for evidence-based policy formulations, lessons of Essaytide, which have access to the Essaytide website and I hope you have a chance to look at the summary report, but also you can access it directly to the QR code in the registration desk outside. During the first phase of Essaytide, we published more than 180 research studies and built lasting technical capabilities in the South African public service. Through the program, 11 PhD scholars were awarded to public servants with more than 50 students participating in the young scholars program, which was something that exposed master students to the work environment in Essaytide, the national treasury, UniWider, but also produced high quality research and that was policy relevant. We also worked with several research assistants who supported the work of the program, and there's several of them are here today and it's great to see them here, and a range of policy dialogues and panel discussions such as the one today were organized to provide debate between researchers and practitioners. This is also possible thanks to the generous support from the European Union, of which we are very grateful. UniWider is excited to continue this engagement alongside the South African partners, Essaytide formally moving into second phase with this launch event today. We're very pleased to have a new partner, the UK's foreign commoner in the office, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to you, our commissioner, for your faith in our work, and I look forward to collaborations in the coming years. The next phase of Essaytide will carry forward with key principles that have already proved that provenance is successful in order today. There will be a strong emphasis on collaboration and inclusivity across the entire operation. The three programmatic pillars, research, capacity development, and policy bridging will continue to be at the center of Essaytide, and there will be a commitment to create a world-class research infrastructure around South Africa's tax and advertising database, which will always be very much a forefront of what we do in Essaytide phase two. So the next phase will adopt a curious approach to explore new research areas, collaborations, activities that can result an even larger impact on the ground in both the short run and the longer. This includes an increased investment in building data infrastructure or policy relevant research in partnership with the National Treasury, but also South Africa's revenue service around enterprise development, public revenue mobilization, and inequality. Countries need data and evidence to create admin and devalued policies. South Africa has been at the vanguard of data with a collection in South Africa with strong and long-standing institutions collecting data for research purposes. Making tax and machine-making data available for research purposes lays South Africa at the forefront of big data research in development, and actually puts the country in a novel position related to other emerging developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic erupted when South Africa was already in a weak economic and fiscal position. The country was already in a technical recession at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the pandemic, South Africa may only return to its pre-COVID GDP levels in 2024 and possibly later than that. Pandemics amplified the macro-fiscal challenges South Africa was already facing. So in esoteric phase two, we will increase activities around fiscal policy questions and macro-chromic policy modeling and aim to deliver evidence base on a range of topics in this area that we hopefully will inform policy makers of macro-chromic policy matters. This includes research and analysis on how South Africa can devise macro-chromic policies that lead to sustainable growth but also lead at the same time reducing equality through fiscal redistribution. Esoteric phase two will run for three years until June 2025. It is implemented through six thematic work streams addressing some of the development challenges faced by South Africa and discussed the excellent panel today. The first work stream enterprise development for job creation and growth. The second work stream public revenue mobilization includes development. The third work stream structural transformation, labor markets and inequality dynamics. The fourth work stream macro-fiscal analysis policy modeling. The fifth work stream food, energy and water in a context of climate change. And the sixth work stream reform implementation. And as I was listening to the panelists today and I was listening to the questions came from the floor, I could already sense some of the questions that we could try and address in the next phase of esoteric. For example, how does one address the persistent and deep societal inequalities in the country? Second, how does one try to reduce the structural fiscal deficit that we see, which essentially implies increasing revenues, what revenues, but also trying to shift expenditures more towards capital expenditures and away from current expenditures at the same time maintaining South Africa's commitment to its world-class social protection programs? There was also a question around youth unemployment. How does one address youth unemployment, especially in the context of the fourth industrial revolution? And as the ministry remarked earlier today, when we talk about just energy transition, who is it just for? How can it be just for everyone? And how can we make sure there's no one behind? So this is the question that came up already in the discussion today and this is certainly going to be very important in the way we think about esoteric phase two. Each of these work streams that we have, the six work streams are co-laid by senior academic and a national treasury of issue, providing important links between the research and the policy relevance of the work undertaken. I'd like to thank all the work stream leads, many of them are here today, for having agreed to put in the energy and expertise into the program. Finally, I'd like to thank all the colleagues in national treasury and the South African Revenue Service. Again, many of you are here today for your excellent partnership, which I look forward to for the second phase. So I look very much, we look very much forward to the results of the second phase and build on what we already achieved in phase one of esoteric tide. I have no doubt that the networks and effective partnerships built through this program will continue to strengthen evidence-based policy making in South Africa and beyond in the years to come.