A comparative analysis of the local economic development practices in South Africa and Namibia

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Local governments in both developing and developed countries are faced with manydevelopmental challenges. This requires the development of strategies and mechanisms toaddress socio economic development and to promote partnerships between the communities andmunicipalities. The development strategy of local economic development has been advanced as atool to stimulate the economy and to create new job opportunities at local level, in partnershipwith central government and other stakeholders. It is in this light that the study first presents adescription of the concept, and the principles and the processes that underlie local economicdevelopment. Followed by this, is an analysis of local economic development in the globalcontext, by briefly mapping what international development agencies are undertaking.Furthermore the study is narrowed down to South Africa and Namibia in assessing the evolvinglocal economic development policies and practices as found currently.The findings indicate that the local economic development strategy is an accepted application inthe world. In Namibia and South Africa the practical evolvement is a relatively recentphenomenon of middle 90s, with the latter progressed far in implementing a more advancedpolicy framework to support the practice. The former is still, very much in the initial phases oflaunching, with few instruments in place to promote local economic development. In Namibialocal economic development is presently evolving under the auspices of the Association of LocalAuthorities for Namibia, with the National Government giving verbal support and promises tocommit it to formulating a national policy in the near future. This practice of LED is faced withconstraints such as a lack of funds, inadequate policy frameworks and poor capacity of humanresources. This is hampering a nationwide rollout, as to date only two comprehensive cases exist,an indication of the limited evolvement of policy and practice in Namibia. In contrast to this,South Africa is a long way ahead in terms of practical cases and policy making, as it is at thestage of giving comments on the draft policy paper on local economic development. The SouthAfrican government, amongst other, has already committed financial support to local authoritiesto help them practically realise the concept of local economic development by means of aNational LED fund. Despite the limited evolvement of local economic development in Namibia, the concept is set togain momentum with the promised envisaged national LED policy, and the current project of theUrban Trust of Namibia coming into full force. This is more so in the capital city, for Windhoekcommitted itself to the process of implementing its local economic development strategy as from2003. However local economic development is no panacea for all the problems, for priorexperiences show there is a thin line between success and failure in practice. Henceforth, localeconomic development as a development approach has the potential to contribute to improvingthe lives of the poor, as long as it is sufficiently linked to broader frameworks and strategies in allspheres of government and even on a global level. Therefore local economic development effortsmust be seen as complementing national policy frameworks in achieving sustainabledevelopment.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University