Electricity supply shortages have constrained South Africa’s growth for several years. Rolling scheduled power cuts (load-shedding) started in 2007 and have intensified exponentially, reaching close to 9 hours daily in 2022. This severe electricity shortfall has disrupted economic activity and increased operating costs for businesses, many of which rely on costly diesel generators. It has also affected other infrastructure such as water, IT, and service delivery (health and education). Although new reforms and investments are being considered, load-shedding is expected to continue for at least two more years.
Weak structural growth and the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated socio-economic challenges. South Africa has recovered its pre-pandemic GDP but not its employment level. At the end of the second quarter of 2023, there were still about 74,000 fewer jobs than at the end of 2019, with women and youth persistently more impacted. Inequality remains among the highest in the world, and poverty was an estimated 62.6% in 2022 based on the upper-middle-income country poverty line, only slightly below its pandemic peak. These trends have prompted growing social demands for government support, which could put the sustainability of public finances at risk if they are to be met.
The global environment remained supportive but increasingly severe domestic constraints led to GDP growth slowing to 1.9% in 2022 from 4.7% in 2021. Mining production fell while manufacturing production stagnated, as load-shedding and transport bottlenecks intensified. The services sectors (financial, transport, and personal) and domestic trade were key drivers of growth. The labor market has remained weak. The employment ratio only increased slightly to 39.4% at the end of 2022 and 40.1% in the second quarter of 2023 from a pandemic low of 35.9% in September 2021. In this context, the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant, introduced in May 2020, was extended for another year until March 2024. Socio-economic challenges were further exacerbated by rising fuel and food (bread and cereals) prices, which disproportionately affected the poor. Inflation averaged 6.9% in 2022 but was 8.2% for those at the bottom 20% of the income distribution.
Key Development Challenges
South Africa has taken considerable strides to improve the well-being of its citizens since its transition to democracy in the mid-1990s, but progress has stagnated in the last decade. The percentage of the population living below the upper-middle-income country poverty line fell from 68% to 56% between 2005 and 2010 but has since trended slightly upwards, to 57% in 2015, and is projected to have reached 60% in 2020.
Structural challenges and weak growth have undermined progress in reducing poverty, heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The achievement of progress in household welfare is severely constrained by rising unemployment, which reached an unprecedented 35.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021. By the second quarter of 2023, the unemployment rate had declined marginally to 32.6%, still above the already high pre-pandemic levels. The unemployment rate is highest among youths aged between 15 and 24, at around 61%.
Other structural challenges have also increased, transport and logistics, which have deteriorated due to weak management of the state-owned enterprise Transnet, theft, and sabotage, constraining South Africa’s export capacity.
South Africa remains a dual economy with one of the highest and most persistent inequality rates in the world, with a consumption expenditure Gini coefficient of 0.67 in 2018. High inequality is perpetuated by a legacy of exclusion and the nature of economic growth, which is not pro-poor and does not generate sufficient jobs. Inequality in wealth is even higher, and intergenerational mobility is low, meaning inequalities are passed down from generation to generation with little change over time.
Last Updated: Sep 14, 2023