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South Africa’s digital economy is being undermined by local beneficiation for copper, which has become an essential mineral in the age of artificial intelligence — from data centres, electricity cables and battery storage. (Flickr)

Copper will determine South Africa’s digital economy success

The economy is expected to create a jobs boom if the country can fix its electricity grid and meet the increasing demand for local copper beneficiation

  • Aarti Bhana
6 min read
Right-wing Afrikaner movements seem to have forgotten that job reservation and other apartheid laws benefited white people at the expense of black people. Photo: Juda Ngwenya

Trade union Solidarity’s myth of Afrikaner suppression exposed

The apartheid state used job reservation, quotas, selective procurement, import controls and industrial policy to advance working class Afrikaners

3 min read
Covid-19 laid bare the failures of South Africa’s efforts to industrialise, which had remained, at least in theory, a cornerstone of the country’s macroeconomic policy since its transition to democracy. Photo: Kevin Sutherland/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Austerity extinguishes industrial policy revival

South Africa risks falling behind as much of the rest of the world embraces industrialisation to grow and protect economies

  • Des Erasmus
4 min read