IF EMIGRATION is a barometer of confidence in a country’s future, then South Africa, where a growing number of people are upping sticks, is in trouble. Private schools complain about losing students as families move abroad. More people are selling their homes in preparation for leaving . “Emigration sales” are a fixture of neighbourhood Facebook groups, with leavers peddling their patio furniture and braais. 

Dawie Roodt, chief economist at the Efficient Group, believes that there is little reason to be optimistic now that South Africa is no longer in a technical recession.

Trying to get to grips with what to expect from Africa’s economies in 2019 can be broken out into three categories of discussion: the good, the underwhelming and the disconcerting.

The final destruction of the economy and the country is now after the election results are out much clearer than most people realise. There can now be no doubt that the ANC government, with its political and economic ideology, will finally destroy all the country's resources, assets and reserves within the next 5 years, says independent agricultural economist Fanie Brink.

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The agricultural economy, by nature, is wobbly relative to other sectors of the economy as its fortunes are largely driven by a factor beyond the control of humankind – the weather. And in the recent past weather conditions have increasingly been a challenge as exemplified by frequent drought in South Africa.

The World Bank cut its 2019 global growth forecast, citing a slowdown in trade growth to the weakest since the financial crisis a decade ago and a drop in global investment.

The U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Mark Green recently concluded a one-week visit to USAID-funded programs at several African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique. His goal was to promote sustainable paths to self-reliance, including in the context of food security programs.

A few weeks back we noted that it is almost certain that South Africa’s agricultural economy will contract in 2019, mainly as a result of the poor summer crop harvest coming after a drought

Although South Africa’s economy has recovered from the previous quarter’s economic performance with a 3.1% quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted growth rate (q/q saar), agriculture did not contribute to the improvement.

SA’s political leaders often mention agriculture as one of the sectors that will boost our economic fortunes and create jobs in rural areas. For a long time, this has been stated without a clear practical execution plan.

South Africa is the strongest research player in Africa, with deep roots in astronomy, agriculture, health and social research. But the country’s persistent budget and social problems have hit the research sector as well – even as the government looks to science and technology to help solve those very problems.

The COVID-19 crisis is a ‘stress test’ for our global food systems – and they are failing.

Economic growth is created by the demand and supply side of the economy and driven by the profit motive and calculated on the basis of an internationally recognized and accepted methodology by Statistics SA.

As SA’s summer crop — which includes maize — is set to be one of the best on record, focus now shifts to the outlook for winter crops, specifically wheat.

There is no shortage of technological innovations designed to boost animal agriculture in Africa. These range from GPS tracking systems which identify and trace pastoralists’ herds to livestock vaccine SMS services that alert farmers to disease outbreaks.

Fanie Brink- Onafhanklike Landbou-Ekonoom/Independent Agricultural Economist.

The high-frequency data across the major economies and the developing world underscore the view that the world will experience one of the sharpest declines in economic activity in history.

Fanie Brink, Independent Agricultural Economist

 South Africa’s agricultural sector was the only shining light in the second quarter of this year.

Fanie Brink, Independent Agricultural Economist