Looking Beyond Provincial Boundaries to Determine Where the Systems Conversation Should Begin
South Africa has nine provinces, each with its own productive characteristics, resources, infrastructure, institutional arrangements and economic history. The purpose of this analysis was not to produce another comparison of which province performs better or worse, but to answer a practical question for STRLDi’s engagement strategy: where should I begin, in what sequence should I engage the provincial leaderships, and what should I be looking to understand in each engagement?
To answer that question, I examined the productive structure of the nine provinces across twenty years, from 2004 to 2024, using five economic sectors: Primary Extraction, Primary Production, Secondary, Tertiary and Quintenary. Looking across two decades allows us to see not simply where a province sits at a point in time, but where its productive structure has remained stable, where it has moved, and where the relationship between its sectors has changed.
The analysis therefore uses two complementary lenses. The first looks at the position of each province relative to the other eight provinces within each economic sector; the second looks at the relative position of the five sectors within each province. Together, these provide the basis for determining where a systems conversation should begin and, importantly, what question that conversation should explore.
Article Outline
South Africa’s Productive Systems: Twenty Years of Change Across Nine Provinces
- Opening: Purpose of the Analysis
- What Changed — and What Did Not?
- What Is Happening Inside the Provinces?
- From the Data to an Engagement Sequence
- What Could the Pipeline Mean for Employment and Income?
- Why the Provincial Conversation Cannot Stop at the Provincial Boundary
- The Engagement Is the Next Stage of the Research
- An Invitation to Engage — Botswana
- Conclusion: What Becomes Visible When We Change the Lens?
What Changed — and What Did Not?
The first lens asks: how does each province rank against the other provinces in each of the five sectors? A rank of 1 represents the highest relative position and 9 the lowest within that sector; the figures are therefore not a composite score for a province.
Provincial Sector Ranks: 2004 → 2024
| Province | Primary Extraction | Primary Production | Secondary | Tertiary | Quintenary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern Cape | 9 → 9 | 9 → 7 | 4 → 5 | 4 → 4 | 3 → 3 |
| Free State | 5 → 5 | 4 → 3 | 6 → 6 | 8 → 8 | 5 → 8 |
| Gauteng | 4 → 4 | 6 → 8 | 1 → 1 | 1 → 1 | 1 → 1 |
| KwaZulu-tal | 7 → 7 | 1 → 2 | 2 → 2 | 3 → 3 | 2 → 2 |
| Limpopo | 2 → 2 | 5 → 5 | 8 → 8 | 5 → 6 | #N/A → 4 |
| Mpumalanga | 3 → 3 | 3 → 4 | 5 → 4 | 7 → 5 | #N/A → 6 |
| North West | 1 → 1 | 8 → 6 | 7 → 7 | 6 → 7 | 6 → 7 |
| Northern Cape | 6 → 6 | 7 → 9 | 9 → 9 | 9 → 9 | 7 → 9 |
| Western Cape | 8 → 8 | 2 → 1 | 3 → 3 | 2 → 2 | 4 → 5 |
Source: STRLDi analysis of the underlying provincial sector data.
What immediately becomes visible is that provincial stability does not necessarily mean structural stability. Gauteng remains at 1 in Secondary, Tertiary and Quintenary, while its Primary Production position moves from 6 to 8; Eastern Cape moves from 9 to 7 in Primary Production while remaining unchanged in Tertiary and Quintenary; and Mpumalanga moves in Secondary and Tertiary while retaining its Primary Extraction position.
The purpose of identifying these movements was therefore not to label a province as improving or declining. It was to identify the questions that warrant a conversation: what explains the movement, what relationships sit behind it, and whether the movement represents an isolated sectoral change or a change in the behaviour of the wider productive system.
The change table makes those points more explicit.
Change in Provincial Sector Rank: 2004 → 2024
| Province | Primary Extraction | Primary Production | Secondary | Tertiary | Quintenary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern Cape | 0 | +2 | -1 | 0 | 0 |
| Free State | 0 | +1 | 0 | 0 | -3 |
| Gauteng | 0 | -2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| KwaZulu-tal | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Limpopo | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | #N/A |
| Mpumalanga | 0 | -1 | +1 | +2 | #N/A |
| North West | 0 | +2 | 0 | -1 | -1 |
| Northern Cape | 0 | -2 | 0 | 0 | -2 |
| Western Cape | 0 | +1 | 0 | 0 | -1 |
The second lens then asks a different question: what has happened to the relationship between the five sectors within each province? This is important because a province may retain much the same position relative to the other provinces while its own productive structure is changing, and that internal movement may tell us something different about where an engagement should begin.
Sector Position Within Each Province: 2004 → 2024
| Province | Primary Extraction | Primary Production | Secondary | Tertiary | Quintenary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern Cape | 5 → 5 | 4 → 4 | 3 → 3 | 1 → 1 | 2 → 2 |
| Free State | 4 → 5 | 5 → 4 | 3 → 3 | 1 → 1 | 2 → 2 |
| Gauteng | 4 → 4 | 5 → 5 | 2 → 2 | 1 → 1 | 3 → 3 |
| KwaZulu-tal | 5 → 5 | 4 → 4 | 2 → 3 | 1 → 1 | 3 → 2 |
| Limpopo | 2 → 3 | 4 → 5 | 3 → 4 | 1 → 2 | 0 → 1 |
| Mpumalanga | 3 → 4 | 4 → 5 | 2 → 3 | 1 → 1 | 0 → 2 |
| North West | 2 → 2 | 5 → 5 | 4 → 4 | 1 → 1 | 3 → 3 |
| Northern Cape | 2 → 3 | 4 → 5 | 5 → 4 | 1 → 1 | 3 → 2 |
| Western Cape | 5 → 5 | 4 → 4 | 2 → 2 | 1 → 1 | 3 → 3 |
Source: STRLDi analysis of the relative position of the five economic sectors within each province.
Here the pattern is different again. Eastern Cape, Gauteng, North West and Western Cape show no movement in the relative ordering of their five sectors, while Free State, KwaZulu-tal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape show varying degrees of internal movement.
That does not tell us what caused the movement. It tells us where there is something worth asking about, and that is precisely why the analysis was undertaken.
From the Data to an Engagement Sequence
The two lenses were therefore not developed simply to describe South Africa’s economy. They were used to determine where the STRLDi conversation should begin and how it should progress across the nine provinces.
The resulting internal engagement sequence is:
1. Free State
2. Mpumalanga
3. KwaZulu-tal
4. Eastern Cape
5. Northern Cape
6. Limpopo
7. North West
8. Western Cape
9. Gauteng
This is not a ranking of the provinces. It is a sequence for engagement, derived from the particular patterns and questions that emerge from the analysis.
Free State comes first because its overall provincial positions remain relatively stable while its underlying structure shows movement, most notably in Primary Production and Quintenary. The question for engagement is therefore not whether Free State is performing well or poorly, but what explains the coexistence of relative stability with movement in particular parts of its productive system, and what does that tell us about the relationships between those sectors?
Mpumalanga presents a different question. Its position in Primary Extraction remains unchanged, but Secondary moves from 5 to 4 and Tertiary from 7 to 5, while the internal sector ordering also shifts; this creates an opportunity to examine whether movement between productive activities is occurring as part of a wider structural relationship or as separate sectoral developments.
KwaZulu-tal follows because its Primary Production position moves from 1 to 2 while its other provincial positions remain relatively stable, and its internal ordering shows movement between Secondary and Quintenary. The engagement can therefore explore how primary production connects with processing, manufacturing and the wider economy, rather than treating agriculture as a stand-alone activity.
Eastern Cape presents another kind of question. Its Primary Production position moves from 9 to 7 while Secondary moves from 4 to 5, but its internal sector ordering remains unchanged across the twenty-year comparison; this raises the question of how a relatively stable internal structure interacts with movement in the province’s position within the wider national productive system.
Northern Cape shows movement in several of its provincial positions, particularly Primary Production and Quintenary, while its internal ordering also changes across Primary Extraction, Primary Production, Secondary and Quintenary. This provides a basis for examining how extraction, production, processing and services can be connected across a province whose productive capacities are distributed differently from those of the more densely industrialised provinces.
Limpopo presents a particularly interesting systems question because its provincial positions are comparatively stable in Primary Extraction, Primary Production and Secondary, while Tertiary moves from 5 to 6 and the relative ordering of all five sectors changes. The question is therefore what is happening beneath the apparently stable provincial position, and how are those internal shifts connected?
North West remains first in Primary Extraction while Primary Production moves from 8 to 6 and Tertiary and Quintenary each move down one position. Its internal sector ordering, however, remains unchanged, making the engagement question how a stable internal structure interacts with changing relative positions across provinces.
Western Cape remains highly stable in its internal sector ordering, while Primary Production moves from 2 to 1 and Quintenary from 4 to 5 in the provincial comparison. The question here is less about internal restructuring and more about how an established productive configuration connects to production elsewhere in the country.
Gauteng comes last in the sequence deliberately. Its position in Secondary, Tertiary and Quintenary remains 1 across the period, and its internal sector ordering also remains unchanged, while Primary Production moves from 6 to 8; this makes it useful to engage after the other provincial conversations have generated a broader understanding of the productive relationships that feed into, move through and depend upon Gauteng.
The sequence therefore allows the engagements themselves to become part of the research. Each province can contribute a different piece of understanding before the conversation reaches the next, rather than approaching all nine provinces with the same assumptions or the same question.
What Could the Pipeline Mean for Employment and Income?
The provincial analysis establishes where the conversation should begin. The next question is what the conversations are ultimately intended to help us understand: whether the productive capabilities distributed across the provinces can be connected into pipelines that generate sustained economic activity, formal employment and higher household income over time.
This is where the distinction between biological production and non-biological extraction becomes important. Biological production can move through processing, manufacturing, distribution and markets, while non-biological extraction can move through beneficiation, processing, manufacturing, infrastructure and markets; both can create multiple points of economic participation rather than leaving value concentrated at the point of extraction or primary production.
The potential impact therefore needs to be considered over time rather than as a one-year intervention. The working employment scenario provides an indication of the scale that the productive system would need to support:
| Horizon | Year | Formal employment scenario | Additional formal jobs from 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting point | 2026 | 12.07 million | — |
| 5 years | 2031 | 14.69 million | +2.62 million |
| 10 years | 2036 | 18.75 million | +6.67 million |
| 20 years | 2046 | 33.57 million | +21.50 million |
| 30 years | 2056 | 54.69 million | +42.61 million |
Working scenario, not a forecast.
These numbers should not be presented as jobs that the proposed provincial pipelines will automatically create. They define the scale of the employment challenge that the productive system would need to address, and therefore provide a useful reference against which the contribution of biological production, extraction, processing, manufacturing, services and markets can subsequently be modelled.
The income question follows from the same logic. Every additional formal job represents not only a worker entering the formal economy, but a potential increase in household purchasing power, demand, savings, investment and reinvestment; the important question is therefore not simply how many jobs can be created, but what kind of productive system can sustain those jobs and allow the income generated to circulate back into the economy.
The next stage of the research is consequently to work backwards through the pipeline: production → processing → manufacturing → markets → employment → household income → reinvestment. For biological production this means examining how much additional value can be created through processing and manufacturing; for non-biological extraction it means asking how much value can be retained through beneficiation and downstream production rather than leaving the system at the point of extraction.
The five-, ten-, twenty- and thirty-year horizons provide the time frame within which this can be examined. The provincial engagements are therefore not an end in themselves; they are the beginning of the process of identifying the productive pipelines, their constraints, their potential employment contribution and the income they could generate over time.
Why the Corridors Must Cross Provincial Boundaries
The proposed corridors do not begin with a decision about where roads, railways or industrial zones should be built. They begin with the productive relationships revealed by the provincial analysis. The purpose is to identify where complementary capabilities already exist across provincial boundaries and where connecting those capabilities could create a more complete pipeline from production or extraction through processing, manufacturing and markets.
The starting point is therefore not the province in isolation, but the relationship between what one province can produce and what another province can process, manufacture, distribute or take to market. The proposed corridors are an initial systems hypothesis arising from that relationship; they are intended to be tested and refined through the provincial engagements.
The Biological Production Corridor
The first opportunity is the connection of provinces with significant agricultural and biological production capabilities into a more deliberate production–processing–manufacturing–market pipeline. The objective is not simply to move agricultural commodities between provinces, but to retain more value within the system by connecting primary production to processing, food manufacturing, logistics and markets.
This is particularly relevant to the relationship between Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-tal and Eastern Cape, where different forms of biological production, processing capability, population markets, industrial capacity and logistics can potentially complement one another.
The question is therefore not how much each province produces on its own. It is how much more value could be created if production were deliberately connected to the processing and manufacturing capacity needed to turn biological resources into higher-value products and sustained employment.
The Mineral Value-Capture Corridor
The second opportunity arises from non-biological extraction. Extraction creates a productive asset, but the economic opportunity does not necessarily end at the point at which the resource is removed from the ground.
The proposed mineral value-capture connections therefore ask how resources from areas such as the Northern Cape and North West, together with the industrial and energy capabilities of Gauteng and Mpumalanga, can be connected more deliberately to beneficiation, manufacturing, infrastructure and markets. The central issue is how much additional productive activity, employment and income can be retained when extraction is connected to downstream value addition rather than treated as an endpoint.
The Industrial and Manufacturing Connections
A third layer concerns the provinces that provide or require industrial and manufacturing capacity. Manufacturing cannot operate as an isolated sector: it requires reliable primary inputs, energy, infrastructure, skills, logistics, finance and markets.
This creates the possibility of connecting production and extraction regions with manufacturing centres and then with domestic, SADC, continental and global markets. The corridor is therefore not simply a transport route; it is a productive pipeline in which each node performs a different economic function.
The Coastal and Market Connections
The productive system ultimately has to reach markets. South Africa’s coastal provinces and ports therefore become part of the wider system not simply because they have ports, but because market access determines whether productive capacity can be converted into sustained economic activity.
The Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-tal therefore need to be considered not only in terms of their own provincial production, but also in terms of how their ports, logistics networks, manufacturing capabilities and markets can connect inland production systems to SADC, continental and global demand.
The Point of the Corridor Approach
The proposed corridors are therefore not intended to replace provincial economic strategies. They are intended to connect them.
A province may be able to increase its own production and still remain constrained if processing capacity is elsewhere. A manufacturing centre may have capacity but lack reliable inputs. A port may have access to global markets but insufficient throughput from productive regions. A population centre may provide demand and human capability without being adequately connected to the production systems that could employ that capability.
The corridor approach brings these relationships into one field of analysis.
This is why the proposed corridors matter to the employment question. If biological production and non-biological extraction can be connected to processing, beneficiation, manufacturing, logistics and markets across provincial boundaries, then the potential employment effect is not confined to the initial production activity. Employment can be created at multiple points along the pipeline, while household income generated at those points can support further demand, investment and reinvestment.
The corridors are therefore hypotheses about where productive relationships may be strengthened. The provincial engagement sequence is the mechanism through which those hypotheses can be tested, challenged and refined with the people who understand each productive system from within.
The Engagement Is the Next Stage of the Research
This is why I am not approaching the provincial leaderships with a predetermined programme or a conclusion that has already been reached.
The initial engagement is intended to share the findings, place the analysis before those who understand the provincial reality, allow the evidence and assumptions to be interrogated, and determine what the next question should be. The research is therefore both an analytical exercise and the basis for a structured learning process across the provinces.
The people who need to be part of that conversation extend beyond one economic department. Provincial leadership, economic development and planning, agriculture and rural development, infrastructure, Treasury, industry and trade, education and human capability, environment and land, and the institutions responsible for implementation all hold parts of the system.
STRLDi is offering the initial sharing of this research without a fee. Where there is interest, the conversation can be held as a focused half-day working session or, where the leadership wishes to work more deeply with the material, as a retreat.
STRLDi is based in Botswana, and our facilities provide a setting in which provincial leadership can step away from the immediate institutional environment and spend focused time interrogating the findings. Provincial leadership is welcome to come to Botswana for such a session, where the starting point would be the evidence, the questions arising from it and the determination of whether there is sufficient basis to take the work further.
The objective remains the same as it was when this analysis began: to understand where the conversation should begin, what each provincial system can teach us, and how those individual conversations can progressively build a more complete picture of South Africa’s productive system.
The ultimate question is therefore not which province comes first.
It is what we will learn by starting the conversation in this sequence, and whether what we learn in one province changes what we should ask in the next.
