Archive
Title: Roundtable Discussion on the South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA)
Date: 14 July 2011
Venue: UNISA Building, Pretoria
The recent joint FES/IGD Roundtable Discussion on the South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA) – an agency still in the construction phase within government which, when launched, will coordinate South Africa’s development assistance. Issues discussed were SADPA in the context of emerging South-South Cooperation; contemporary International Development Cooperation and emerging actors, as well as options for the creation of SADPA. Guest speakers included Dr Sven Grimm of the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University, Ms Elizabeth Sidiropoulos of the South African Institute for International Affairs and Ms Lyndsey Duff of the Institute for Global Dialogue.
Title: COP17: South Africa and the road to Durban 2011
Date: 4-5 July 2011
Venue: Burgers Park Hotel, Pretoria
FES South Africa and the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) co-hosted this event in the run-up to the upcoming UNFCCC Negotiations to be hosted in Durban, South Africa from 28 November to 9 December 2011. This international conference provided an overview of the challenges facing the multilateral environmental negotiations and the challenges facing South Africa in hosting the COP17 talks in late 2011. Finally, the conference also considered the prospects for a future agreement arising out of the talks and the development of a new climate change regime against the backdrop of the contemporary geo-political order.
FES/WTO Regional Dialogue on "Current and Future Challenges for the Multilateral Trading System - Perspectives from Southern Africa" Cape Town, 15-18 November 2010
South Africa & Emerging Power Alliances: IBSA, BRIC, BASIC Hosted by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD), Burgers Park Hotel - Pretoria, 5 November 2010 See programme
The Misunderstanding between the Media and Civil Society
Axel Schmidt, Resident Representative of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Office in South Africa, speaking about the misunderstanding between the media and civil society in his opening remarks at a roundtable discussion, which sought to probe how the South African media reports on the economy.
Schmidt explained that there is an increasing need for fresh discussion and for organisations to identify shared interests.
At a recent gathering regarding the 2010 Media Barometer that is developed with the Media Institute of Southern Africa, he had noted the excellent quality of the contributions of civil society and media practitioners.
But, it appears that there is a lack of common understanding between the print media and civil society, in a context where the political landscape has become more difficult for the media, and there is a commonly acknowledged tendency to restrict media freedom. There has been an unprecedented attack on the Constitution and the media appears to have taken for granted that the historic civil society allies would be supportive, when in fact this has proved not to be the case, and often those allies have been the strongest critics. This has to do with lack of proximity to specific audiences and not civil society at large.
Schmidt made these remarks at the event held in mid September and co-hosted by SACSIS and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung South Africa Office.
Media representatives that spoke at the event included Nic Dawes (Editor in Chief of the Mail and Guardian), Alide Dasnois (Editor of the Cape Times), Mondli Makhanya (Editor in Chief of Avusa Media and Chairman of SANEF) as well as Reg Rumney (Head of the Centre for Economics Journalism in Africa, Rhodes University).
"The Future of social democracy" conference in Cape Town: Currently the concept of social democracy seems to be in crisis. Even in its historical centre Europe social democratic movements are loosing constantly electoral support. The discussion group therefore sought to discuss the reasons for this crisis... Read more
Transformation of state seminar V "Sourcing finance for development": Contrary to South Africa Brazil was very successful in creating high growth of GDP and of employment and expects an even increasing growth in the next years. Thus it seems fruitful...Read more
Transformation of state seminar V: Sourcing finance for development |
Contrary to South Africa Brazil was very successful in creating high growth of GDP and of employment and expects an even increasing growth in the next years. Thus it seems fruitful for South Africa to look into the reasons for this remarkable success and to ask which lessons could be drawn from the Brazilian case. The main guest Dr Joao Carlos Ferraz is the director of research, corporate planning and risk management at the Brazilian development bank BNDES. The seminar pursued therefore the objective to confront relevant actors of South African development politics, particularly the treasury, with the contribution of the BNDES to the Brazilian growth in order to enable them to learn from the Brazilian case. To maximise the effect of the debate the HSRC established a video conference with other relevant actors in Cape Town and Durban
The central hypothesis of Dr. Ferraz for successful development was that “more state and more market” are required for long-term growth. This hypothesis captures the notion that for sustainable development of emerging market economies state funding and state initiatives are needed to pursue long term structural adjustments with the overall objective to foster functional and internationally well integrated private markets, which finance long-term development goals on their own.
The first important difference between South African DFIs and the BNDES is the source of finance and its close cooperation with the treasury. The BNDES finances itself through a workers assistance fund whereas South African DFI’s acquire their funds on the private financial markets. This public financial capital enables the BNDES to decide more independently about the procurement of finance and therefore to pursue easier long term, not directly profitable, development targets and gives them a greater discretion for structural adjustments efforts. The cooperation with the treasury is a prerequisite to formulate and to implement public goods effectively even if they conflict with short-term private interests. A nother crucial difference to South African DFIs is the institutional capacity of BNDES. The BNDES is a learning institution, having drawn its lessons from the debt crisis in the eighties and developed excellent analytical capacities. The BNDES operates almost with no corruption, a very lean and effective management and high monitoring capacities. Particularly its monitoring capacities enable the BNDES to achieve a remarkable record in successful project outcomes and the payback of finance. The lesson from the BNDES is therefore not so much to enable more concessional funding in general but that concessional funding need to be based on effective and operational performance measures and analysis of project risks. The crucial problem of South African DFIs is the bad record on project outcomes and the high risk of default for concessional funds. Without the same institutional and analytical capacities of the BNDES a higher discretion through public finance won’t improve the success of South African DFIs a lot.
Although Brazils growth needs to proove its sustainability in the future the experiences of the BNDES should be a reason for South Africa to increase firstly its efforts of institutional development of its DFIs through reducing the level of corruption and improving the analytical and monitoring capacities and secondly to gain a greater independence from private capital for long-term development projects, for instance through establishing a workers assistance fund like in Brazil or through establishing a greater support of the treasury and a closer cooperation of state-institutions. Just if these improvements go hand in hand greater success of DFIs projects and a more sustainable long-term orientation of their funding can be expected.