IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/inafri/v17y2025i1p63-79.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

State Institutions and Development in South Africa: The Case of Two State-Owned Enterprises

Author

Listed:
  • Isaac Khambule

Abstract

The debate on state institutions in the economic development of developing countries has been ongoing for the past three decades. In the 1980s, the debate was dominated by the importance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and transitioned to the privatisation of SOEs in the early1990s. The debate re-emerged in 2010 due to the increasing influence of Chinese SOEs in the global economy. While the corporatisation of SOEs led to financial results being the core measure of good governance and performance, balancing financial performance with societal socio-economic impact is necessary for developing nations as SOEs are established to stimulate social and economic development. This article uses secondary data to explore the social and economic impact of two South African SOEs—the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA)—to contribute to the ongoing debate on the importance of state institutions on the development of developing countries. The article demonstrates the criticalness of the IDC in stimulating the country’s industrial development capacity and structural transformation, whereas the DBSA provides infrastructure investment to enable structural transformation through an enabling development ecosystem. While contributing to the merits of the state and development, failures and areas of interventions are also discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Isaac Khambule, 2025. "State Institutions and Development in South Africa: The Case of Two State-Owned Enterprises," Insight on Africa, , vol. 17(1), pages 63-79, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:inafri:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:63-79
    DOI: 10.1177/09750878241270349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09750878241270349
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09750878241270349?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:inafri:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:63-79. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.