National Treasury / Nobel in Africa Policy Roundtable Event

South Africa faces many longstanding economic challenges, and measured against most key development indicators, it has been unable to make meaningful progress over the last two decades. Economic growth has flatlined, unemployment has risen, while poverty and inequality show no signs of decreasing. Many of the underlying economic and policy problems that contribute to this stagnation are well documented, but new evidence from other countries can provide important lessons for South Africa on how to tackle some of its most pressing problems.

"How to make employment and labour market policy central in our thinking on Social Protection, Industrialisation, and Climate Change in South Africa: A conversation with 3 international experts" was a high-level, policy-focused session was centred around these 3  themes. This event offered a unique opportunity to learn from and engage with three visiting economists who are distinguished experts in their fields, and whose research focusses on economic development challenges in countries around the world:

• Mushfiq Mobarak, Professor at Yale University - Cash transfers, lessons from COVID-19, Migration, RCTS
• Eric Verhoogen, Professor at Columbia University - Firms, industrial policy and labour markets in low and middle-income countries
• Seema Jayachandran, Professor at Princeton University - Gender, mother and child health, social protection, climate change and the environment

This policy roundtable session was an outreach event of the Nobel Symposium in Economic Sciences under the theme, “Micro development research in the last 20 years: what have we learned?”. The Symposium in Economic Sciences is the third in the Nobel in Africa Symposia Series hosted by STIAS (in partnership with Stellenbosch University, under the auspices of the Nobel Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with funding from the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation).

The event was hosted by: the National Treasury, in collaboration with the Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) programme; the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) at Stellenbosch University; and the DPRU, on Friday, March 15th 2024, at StatsSA in Salvokop, Pretoria.