Local economic development and partnerships: critical reflections from South Africa: Fid-Bau Portal

Local economic development and partnerships: critical reflections from South Africa

Marais, Lochner

The rise of partnerships originates from the 1970s during which period efforts towards public-sector development dominated local economic efforts, and from the 1980s when the emphasis was on the private sector as an agent of development. This has led to a significant reduction in the role of the public sector. Ostensibly, such partnerships bridged ideological divides in political economic thinking and entailed benefits arising from economies of scale and the sharing of resources, commitment and information. The notion of partnerships has become conventional wisdom in development activities across the globe, as has been the case in local economic development and community development in South Africa. This paper, however, challenges its effectiveness in the context of the new South Africa and showcases some of the problems associated with partnerships from the Gijima project in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa (2004–2009). It is argued that far more attention could be given to the clustering of firms as a form of partnership. Evidence from the Gijima project suggests that: the public sector often dominates private–public partnerships; NGOs often prefer partnerships with NGOs; private-sector involvement remains limited; a lack of trust remains; partnerships are seldom formed around the need to access markets; and rigid government structures do not easily facilitate partnership working.