This action-focused policy colloquium will bring together top decision-makers in government and leading thinkers in academia, the private sector and beyond to outline a range of interventions that can place South Africa on a new growth trajectory.
The final webinar in the Future of Payments Systems series focused on integrated databases for coordinated social service delivery and discussed insights and priorities for future work on payments systems. The first section of the programme included case studies and presentations from Eldrid Jordaan, GovChat, Portia Matsena, BankservAfrica and Megan Brown, First National Bank. A panel discussion followed focusing on lessons learned from the series and priorities that could inform future work to improve the G2P payments system in South Africa including panellists from the Presidency, World Bank, SASSA, BASA and PASA as well as the Hamilton Platform.
Webinar included presentations highlighting aspects of beneficiary-focused payments from Anna Metz, World Bank in ID and service delivery, Dianne Dunkerley from SASSA on the SRD Grant appeals process, Max Sokolich, on digital identity in South Africa, self-sovereign identity from Sean Mouton, Absa as well as a case study on the Philippines by Yoonyoung Cho, World Bank.
The fifth webinar in the Future of Payment Systems Series focused on digitisation in the public sector. The webinar comprised an overview on Governance issues for G2P payments from Khuram Farooq at the World Bank, a presentation from Portia Matsena, CIO of BankservAfrica, on her experiences in digitisation in the South African public sector, an overview on Fees and incentives in social protection funds disbursements from William Cook from CGAP, as well as Case studies on Bangladesh and Poland presented by Karol Karpinski from the World Bank. A panel covering topics regarding public sector digitizing public sector systems included Andrew Donaldson (UCT), Ismail Mamoojee (Detroit Consulting), Dhiresh Ramklass (GTAC), Portia Matsena (BankservAfrica), Khuram Farooq and Karol Karpinski (World Bank).
The fourth webinar in the Future of Payment Systems Series on data standards and uses in stacks covered data standards for interoperability and exchange between public and private data platforms, data privacy and security, better use of data for means testing and leveraging novel data uses. It included a reflection session discussing issues emerging from the webinars as well as key elements of the payments systems of the future with international and South African experts as well as presentation from SASSA by Carin Koster, case studies on Egypt, by Nahla Zeitoun, and Turkey, by Ahmet Fatih Ortakaya.
The webinar on 6 October offered insights on End to End Payment Solutions, Onboarding, Payment Disbursement & Payout Options. The event included case studies on the SRD 350 Grant, the payments voucher for the Agricultural Grant to Small Scale Farmers an outline of BankservAfrica’s Rapid Payments Programme and an overview of SARS journey to its current P2G system.
The business model report for the City of Tshwane’s Waste Picker Integration strategy includes an in-depth assessment of informal waste management. It addresses the interface with commercial waste management operators and potential climate change linkages in the green economy. It also outlines a capacity building and knowledge management strategy to promote wider learning within the local government environment.
This project involved the development of an integration strategy and business model for waste picker integration in the City of Tshwane. It resulted in a case study and good practice guidelines to inform Waste Picker Integration in other municipalities. This completion report provides the project findings and observations.
This booklet contains a compendium of three documents – the Policy Guidelines, Framework By-law Guidelines and Health, Safety and Infrastructure Guidelines for public space trading. These guidelines provide important recommendations for municipalities to ensure a supportive environment for the informal economy
This project sought to develop a set of interrelated regulator tools to support local governments in creating a supportive regulatory environment for the informal sector. This completion report provides an overview of the project’s findings and observations.
The second event of the series contained presentations on next generation G2P architecture, how digital payments can accelerate the achievement of development outcomes, modern G2P design principles, enablers of accessible and choice based G2P payments and a summary of learnings from COVID-19 response. Country case studies included an overview of the Direct-to-Citizens Payments system in Bangladesh and a powerful vision for G2P transformation in Indonesia.
This research paper details key issues impacting on local government and public space trading in South Africa. It also identifies the relevant policy issues which inform the development of responsive regulatory guidelines.
The Framework bylaw for informal trading in public spaces contributes to the broader objectives of ensuring economic participation, social protection and inclusion and the strengthening of local government.
These policy guidelines identify key challenges in the governance of public space trading. They present solutions and propose a set of policy recommendations for municipalities, to enable more effective governance of informal trading in public spaces.
The SALGA guidelines aim to assist municipalities in the development of a more enabling environment for public space trading. This document provides the guidelines for ensuring safe livelihood opportunities in public spaces and guidelines for space planning, infrastructure provisions and sustainable urban management.
This document provides a review of the existing research on SMME policy development. It was compiled in preparation for the Department of Small Business Development’s SMME Research Colloquium.
CBPEP’s Design Thinking approach provided insights into how processes can be streamlined to enable government capacity building for Enterprise Red Tape Reduction and Administrative Simplification.
The Department of Small Business Development’s 2016/2017 annual review presents key findings and recommendations to improve the effectiveness of government in the SMME space.
A national definition of small enterprise helps to inform business support measures, assess change in the business sector and promote consistency. This document summarises the updates to the definition of small enterprise.
Schedule 1 defines various parameters of SMMEs. CBPEP’s proposed amendments to the schedule ensure that the definitions are relevant and applicable to the current nature of small enterprises. These amendments are included in this report.
The NSBA aims to create an enabling environment for small enterprises. CBPEP’s project to Review National Definitions for Small Enterprises proposed a set of updates to Schedule 1 of this Act.
An outline of GTAC’s strategic focus and performance.
In this article, the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking at the University of Cape Town shows how design thinking can help prepare graduates for the working world and policymakers for real economic recovery.
Design thinking is an approach to understanding and solving complex problems. The Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking at the University of Cape Town helps students and professionals develop a design thinking mindset.
This eight-part webinar series explores the future of government-to-person (G2P) and person-to-government (P2G) payments in a post-Covid digital world. The webinar series aims to build capacity by learning from other countries and government departments on G2P and P2G solutions and develop a high-level road map for the South African government.
This paper, written by Rudi Dicks, the Head of the PMO in the Presidency, highlights five priority actions taken by government to accelerate youth pathways into the economy over the next five years.
The Presidential Employment Stimulus has created a platform to track the performance of its various programmes. It is an online dashboard that reflects work in progress including beneficiary and budget data which is updated monthly.
The PES is the most rapid expansion of public employment programmes in South Africa’s history. The Presidency has released three progress reports since the programme launched in October 2020.
The PES supports a spectrum of opportunities, focusing on job creation through public employment; job retention in vulnerable sectors; direct support to livelihood strategies; and fast-tracking high-impact employment enablers.
These guidelines aim to support the implementation of South Africa’s National Waste Management Strategy. They contribute towards a just transition to a low carbon economy as outlined in the National Development Plan – Vision 2030, and to a more circular economy as outlined in the White Paper on Science Technology and Innovation. This CBPEP project engaged with this evidence-based document in developing the waste pickers integration strategy for the city of Tshwane.
The aim of this workshop was to validate and augment the findings and insights from stakeholder consultations and desktop research. Best practices, case studies and principles were presented to inform the integration strategy proposal.
A webinar was held to reflect on the lessons learned by trainers, employers and workers from the participating firms and the supporting institutions. It also explored the potential for rolling out SCORE to additional manufacturing sectors and industries.
Kenneth Creamer, economics lecturer at WITs University, has identified a number of short-term actionable interventions for South Africa’s electricity policy. At CBPEP’s Colloquium on 500 Days of Economic Policy Action, he addressed ways to improve energy security, reduce the costly resort to load-shedding, stabilise and restructure Eskom and secure longer run employment, industrialisation and decarbonisation objectives.
“The energy sector needs to set South Africa up to leverage the large benefits that will come from being an emerging market leader in the climate agenda, rather than making it bear the costs of lagging behind.” This is the advice from Meridian Economics, who list five steps the energy sector can take in the next 500 days to future-proof the energy sector.
Charley Lewis, Independent Analyst, says that in the short term ICT is unlikely to create many jobs and may even destroy certain jobs. However, intensifying the role of ICT in the economy is essential to underpin economic growth over the medium to longer term, leading to employment creation across a wide range of the economy where ICT is deployed or underpins business processes. His views, shared during the latest CBPEP Colloquium on 500 Days of Economic Policy Action, were recently published in the Business Day.
Find out more about: how the project is part of the national Pathway Management Networks, what tools have been developed to support data collection and management systems, the plans for the pilot in Atlantis, and upcoming events where the project will be presented.
This collaborative pilot project, built on research findings, aims to help realise potential job-creation in agriculture, through the optimisation of land use and farming systems. The project blog will document the process from beginning to end, as collaborators work on developing a methodology for employment intensive land reform at municipality level.
The findings from this research were launched in June 2020 and include policy recommendations that explore appropriate institutional capacity building within Government, its partners and beneficiaries. Learn more about the project and the next steps from this video.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the South African economy hard, with over two million jobs lost. CBPEP has responded to COVID-19 by speeding up innovation and breaking down barriers to change. Watch a film on the About page to learn more.
