Publications and media
Support for municipalities in South Africa
The INCA Municipal Debt Fund project, a R3 billion fund, supported by INCA Portfolio Managers, SECO and AFD was established to improve the supply of urban infrastructure in intermediate cities through...
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Green Energy in South Africa
South Africa is an energy-intensive country and a major emitter of greenhouse gases because of the importance of the industrial sector in its gross domestic product (GDP), the use of coal for energy g...
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Stakeholder engagement on inequality trends in South Africa – A multidimensional diagnostic of inequality
It is widely accepted that South Africa’s persistently high levels of inequality are not only a humanitarian crisis, they are also unsustainable and curb the country’s growth potential. Yet, despite e...
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Social Housing and Spatial Inequality in South African Cities
Social housing can be a powerful tool for integrating socially divided cities by providing decent rental accommodation for low- and moderate-income working families in central urban areas. Yet as new...
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Social Housing and Upward Mobility in South African Cities
Not enough is being done to maximise the prospects of upward mobility for the tenants of South Africa’s social housing programme. Household-level improvements in well-being are generally taken for gra...
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Inequality measurements: the impact of a correction for missing top incomes in a South African household surve...
Often the richest households are poorly captured in household surveys1, leading to a likely underestimate of inequality in analyses such as CEQ Assessments2 that conduct fiscal incidence using househo...
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South African housing subsidies: the challenges of measuring the impact of a productive asset
When analysing the impact of South African housing subsidies on poverty, Goldman, Woolard & Jellema (forthcoming) find that the housing programme looks less progressive than expected. They find both t...
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The role of social housing in reducing inequality in South African cities
Social housing is a powerful tool to integrate divided cities by providing decent rental accommodation for low- and moderate-income working families. It can bring communities together in dense urban a...
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Social Housing and Upward Mobility in South Africa
More could be done to improve the chances of upward mobility for tenants of social housing in South Africa. The social housing policy makes no mention of upward mobility for tenants, even though this...
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Handbook on Inequality Measurement for Country Studies
Writing a country level study on inequality can be an intimidating task for researchers and statisticians. How does one begin to conceptualize such a study? What needs to be included? What sorts of an...
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Earnings inequality over the life-course in South Africa
This paper revisits the measure of inequality introducing a dynamic dimension, which allows analysing inequality over the life course.
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Spatial inequality through the prism of a pandemic: Covid-19 in South Africa
While the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made everyone feel very vulnerable, the pandemic has made manifest the significant gaps between individuals in terms of exposure and in terms of the ca...
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Incubating innovative Audio-visual content
The Digital Content Hub is AFD’s first investment in the area of digital innovation in South Africa and reflects a new focus on financing cultural, creative and tech industries as key players in local...
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Inspiring children and uplifting the city through sports
The city centre of Johannesburg, historically the heart of the city's economic activity, has seen a sharp decline since the 1970s: many buildings were abandoned, public spaces were left in decline and...
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Inequality trends in South Africa: A multidimensional diagnostic of inequality
This report on inequality trends in South Africa is a joint publication produced by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) in partnership with the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SAL...
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Evaluation Summary - Budget support to the spatial development strategy of the City of Johannesburg
In South Africa, for the “Urban development” sector, the partial financing of the City of Johannesburg’s medium-term budget was subject to an evaluation in May 2018. This budget support operation w...
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AFD and Southern Africa
The Johannesburg-based regional office for Southern Africa covers AFD’s activities in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. AFD’s par...
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Southern Africa: Energy transition
Southern Africa has access to a wealth of primary renewable energy sources, with enough geothermal, hydro, wind and solar resources to provide gigawatts of power. However, the adoption of low-carbon t...
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Southern Africa: Biodiversity
Southern Africa has a rich natural heritage of global significance to the world’s climate and biological diversity. Unfortunately, the capacity of nature to maintain this biological wealth is rapidly...
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Southern Africa: Infrastructure
Southern Africa has some of the most developed infrastructure in the continent. However, the region still faces numerous challenges, such as insufficient energy supply, highly priced and unpredictable...
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Southern Africa: Research and development
Research is a fundamental first step toward designing successful development projects, as it gives important insights into the political, socio-economic and environmental context in which projects wil...
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