Innovation is widely acknowledged as being key to economic growth and progress, particularly as innovation by business enterprises is vital in ensuring their future success and competitiveness in an increasingly competitive global market. With this in mind, the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII) was commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to undertake a national innovation survey based on international best practice.

The current and future capacity of South Africa to generate and sustain access to information and communication technologies (ICT) for its citizens is an important development priority. The Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA), launched by government in 2006, identified key factors which are affecting South Africas drive to achieve 6% economic growth and to halve unemployment and poverty in South Africa by 2014. One of these factors is the cost of telecommunications. Together, the cost of telecommunications and the availability of ICT infrastructure will crucially facilitate or frustrate attempts to improve levels of access to ICT.

It is widely accepted that innovation is key to economic growth. Countries where research and innovation are high on the national agenda are best suited to prosper in the knowledge-based economy. Conversely, countries whose economies are mainly dependent on natural resources and basic industries tend to lack competitiveness and flexibility in adapting to changing global trends. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has long been concerned with the measurement of research and experimental development (R&D) and innovation activities.

This report was prepared for the Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP). It explores the demand for and access to financial services in three pilot sites in rural Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. The study examines developments in micro-finance, best practices in a rural context and key policy issues.

In any system of innovation, the constituency of participating individuals plays a large role in determining its strengths and weaknesses. A fundamentally mobile resource, individuals are influenced by a complex nexus of factors prompting their movements. This book is a review of the literature on the topic and is designed as a resource for anyone interested in analysing human mobility and the factors and policies through which it influences innovation.

Utilising the DaimlerChrysler human resources upgrade in one of South Africas least developed provinces as the basis, this is a well-developed case study of the relationship between human capital in host economies and international capital inflows. It describes how DaimlerChrysler upgraded human resources in its East London plant where the company manufactures the Mercedes C-Class model for export. Lorentzen explores the extent and depth of the upgrading along and beyond the automotive supply chain, and its repercussions on local education and training institutions. Finally, he analyses how foreign direct investment and local industrial development interact in the short and medium term, and hypothesises as to the possible longer-term outcomes in the absence of proper regional economic planning.

This book examines the emerging patterns of agricultural finance in Zimbabwe since the advent of the Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) implemented from the year 2000, drawing from the Nairobi debates of the 1980’s on contract farming and the peasantry in Africa.

For a long time economists have warned that abundant natural resources are bad for economic development because their exploitation stunts manufacturing exports, favours rent-seeking activities by politically well-connected people, and generally leads to unsustainable policies for which, as so often, the poor end up paying the price with lost growth and opportunity. But over the last few years the so-called resource curse has been revisited as historically uninformed, theoretically unsatisfactory, empirically incorrect, and largely useless for development policy.

The steadily increasing popularity of tourism in both developed and developing countries has led to an intriguing debate around its role in sustainable development. In this concise overview, Johan Viljoen begins by defining rural tourism and examining international trends in rural tourism development in both developed and developing contexts.

This major textbook, reprinted for the fourth time in 2004, is written for students in development studies. It provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary picture of development research over the past generation, and is organised around four major themes: economic development and underdevelopment, politics and the state, socio-economic development and the state and civil society and the development process.

Based on the 1991 census, this atlas presents a set of demographic, socio-economic and cultural profiles of South Africa. The atlas contains chapters on: demography and housing, labour and employment, education, economic and human development, language and religion.

This title analyses the results of a survey of the political attitudes of members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) undertaken in the run up to South Africas third democratic general election in 2004. The survey was the third in a series, two previous ones having been conducted by some of the authors writing in the present collection before the elections of 1994 and 1999. The results of all three surveys are presented in an appendix, and taken together constitute a unique data base whose interpretation makes a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary South African history, notably with regard to how and why COSATU has become a major political actor within the tripartite alliance which links it to the ruling African National Congress and the South African Communist Party.