SDIs: Infrastructure, agglomeration and the region in industrial policy

This article reports on the initial findings of an Industrial Strategy Project Research Programme on a key current element of national industrial policy, namely Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs). The ISP Research Programme is concerned with industrial investment. The operational industrial SDIs are examined against the backdrops of the pattern of contemporary industrial location in South Africa and the emergence of a regional industrial policy for the country; the long-run experience with SDI-type programmes internationally and in South Africa; and directions in current regional industrial development theory and practice, particularly those interventions aimed at strengthening the economies associated with regional/sectoral clusters or agglomerations typically embedded in metropolitan locations. The preliminary findings of research commissioned on long-run industrial development in Richards Bay, and the current SDI processes under way in the Fish River SDI (Eastern Cape) and the West Coast SDI (Western Cape) are then presented These findings demonstrate that for the SDIs to meet their intentions in terms of maximising inward investment, creating jobs and catalysing durable regional economic development, the large opportunity present to use SDI processes to build the capacity and social infrastructure for economic development at local and regional level on — and between — both public and private sector sides should be grasped. To this end, it is also suggested that SDIs be closely linked to other government industrial promotion and support activities, notably the cluster initiatives and SMME support programmes, both of which may themselves need, at this point, far clearer regional focus.