WANDILE SIHLOBO: Lessons about rural development in SA from Lambert’s Bay
SA’s primary agricultural sector is not becoming insignificant — it is only that other sectors have grown at a faster pace
It is easy to overlook the importance of the SA agricultural sector if one only views it from its contribution as a share of the GDP, which has declined from 4.2% in the 1996 to 2.6% in 2017. What is often not captured in this narrative is that the value of the agricultural sector has grown by almost 50%, from R50.5bn to R75.2bn over the same period. In other words, SA’s primary agricultural sector is not becoming insignificant — it is only that other sectors, particularly the services sector, have grown at a faster pace. But beyond these headline agricultural numbers are people dependent on the sector (directly and indirectly). As I type this, it is 7.49am, April 12, and I am in a car traveling from the small fishing and potato-producing town of Lambert’s Bay — about 280km north of Cape Town. As an outsider to this West Coast town, the first thing I sensed when I drove in the previous day was the vibrancy of the local economy; after all, the town is a home to one of the three bigge...
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