‘Structural weaknesses’ hamper SA businesses in Africa

South African companies stand to lose out in the new race for Africa due to a number of “structural weaknesses”, according to the National Development Plan released in November by the National Planning Commission under Trevor Manuel. The main problem is logistics. “Crucially, poor transport links and infrastructure networks, as well as tariff and non-tariff barriers, raise the cost of doing business and hobble both investment and internal trade. “The Southern African Development Community (SADC) faces significant challenges on many fronts, including infrastructure, trade barriers and governance,” according to the plan. On the subject of manufactured exports, it says “keeping costs (especially logistics costs) down is important for these types of exports. In part, due to these physical constraints, “one of the biggest exports since 1994 has been management skills, deployed in settings that are common to us, but less familiar to competitors from developed countries.”