A striking gender divide in transport choices is highlighted by the latest Gauteng-City Region Observatory’s Quality of Life survey: women are more reliant on minibus taxis than men, and men are more likely to drive cars as their main mode of transport.

Of the more than 3,700 people interviewed, 42% of the women said they primarily travelled by minibus taxi compared with 33% of men; whereas 32% of men said driving was their main way of getting around, against just 22% of women.

Women are also more likely to be passengers in private cars than men. Passengers include people getting a ride with someone they know or paying for a ride in a private car, but excludes e-hailing and meter taxis.

The 2017/18 survey showed that 51% of women relied on minibus taxis, while only 16% drove cars. There has also been an increase in men driving cars – only 27% were driving in 2017.

Education has a big effect on earnings. Employees with tertiary education earn a lot more than people who are less educated, but regardless of the level of education, men still earn more than women, according to Statistics SA’s Monthly Earnings in South Africa 2017-2022 report.

The median monthly earnings of people with tertiary education who work for an employer were R21,000. This is R15,583 (or 288%) higher than the national median earnings of R5,417 for all employees.

For those who completed high school, median earnings were R5,700, slightly above the national median, but still far below those who carried on studying to obtain a post-school qualification.

For female employees with tertiary education, however, the median earnings were R5,000 (or 25%) lower than for male employees. Female employees who completed high school had median earnings of R4,992 a month, while male employees’ earnings were R6,000 a month, a 20% pay gap.

Women in South Africa earn 25% less a month than men, according to Statistics SA. Its report on monthly earnings between 2017 and 2022 shows that the median earnings for female employees were R4,800 a month, while the median for men was R6,000.

This gender pay gap typically grows wider in higher-paying roles, with men consistently earning more than women in most occupations. Male managers earned a median of R25,000, R7,000 more than female managers’ R18,000. Among professionals, the gap was R5,000, with men earning R26,000 compared with R21,000 for women in the same role.

There are, however, two exceptions where women’s median monthly earnings surpass those of men. Female technicians earned R18,000 a month in 2022, slightly higher than male technicians’ median of R17,000. Domestic work also saw women earning more, with female domestic workers earning a median of R2,400 compared with R2,000 for men.

There are significant regional differences in women’s median earnings across the country, according to a Statistics SA report which tracks South Africans’ earnings between 2017 to 2022.

Women in Gauteng and the Western Cape consistently earned higher salaries compared with other provinces, with Gauteng’s median earnings reaching R7,000 by 2022 – higher than the national median for men (R6,000 a month). In contrast, provinces such as Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal saw slower growth, with women in Limpopo earning a median R3,700 a month and R4,200 in KwaZulu-Natal. The national median for both sexes is R5,417 a month.

Other provinces such as the Eastern Cape and Free State have seen slower salary increases over time, with the median earnings of women in the Eastern Cape reaching just R4,000 by 2022.

In general, all employees earn more in Gauteng than anywhere else in the country. Overall median earnings are R2,000 higher there than the national median.

The median earnings of female employees in 2022 was R4,800 a month, 25% lower than R6,000 median for men.

There were 13-million employees in SA in 2022 – people who ‘work for an employer and receive payment’. Their median monthly earnings were R5,417 a month, according to a new Statistics SA report. Of those employees, 7.5-million were male with half earning less than R6,000 a month and half earning more than that. Of the 6-million female employees, half earned more than R4,800 and half earned less.

Women’s median earnings were slightly above the national minimum wage, which was about R4,000 a month in 2022 (based on working eight hours a day for 22 days). The average food basket for a low-income family cost R4,853.18 in December 2022, according to the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group.

The gender pay gap in South Africa not only persists but grows wider as employees age. According to Statistics SA’s Monthly Earnings in South Africa 2017-2022 report, women aged between 35 and 44 had median monthly earnings of R5,000 in 2022. This is R1,400 less than their male counterparts, whose median earnings were R6,400.

For women aged 45 to 54, the gap widened to R2,600, with women earning R4,900 compared with R7,500 for men. Among employees aged 55 to 64, the disparity was even greater: women earned a median of R5,500 a month, while men earned R9,000 – a difference of R3,500.

Despite earning more than younger women, women in the oldest age group were out-earned by men in all age groups except the two youngest (15- to 34-year-olds). This trend highlights the unequal value placed on experience and seniority between the sexes, with men seeing greater financial rewards as they age.

The gap between the median monthly earnings of skilled and less-skilled workers in South Africa is widening, according to a report on earnings compiled by Statistics SA.

The data, which covers the period 2017 to 2022, shows that professionals, managers and technicians consistently earn far more than employees in less-skilled occupations. By 2022, professionals were earning a median of R24,000 a month, followed by managers at R22,000 and technicians at R18,000. In contrast, workers in less-skilled roles, such as clerks (R7,000), craft workers (R5,000) and domestic workers (R2,350), earn significantly lower wages.

This growing disparity is evident when looking at the rate of increase in earnings over time. While skilled occupations (green lines) have seen steady growth, those in less-skilled roles (blue and orange lines) have experienced much slower growth. Managers earn 83% more than they did in 2010, while clerks’ earnings have increased by 40%.

Where you live in South Africa influences what you earn. Employees – people who work for an employer and receive payment – earn more in Gauteng than anywhere else in the country. The median monthly earnings in Gauteng were R7,500 a month, R2,000 higher than the Western Cape, which had the second-highest median at R5,500, according to StatsSA’s Monthly Earnings in SA 2017-2022 report.

Median earnings represent the middle point in the range, so 50% of employees earn less than the median and 50% earn more. The national median in 2022 was R5,417. Gauteng and the Western Cape were the only two provinces with median earnings higher than the national median.

The two provinces with the lowest median earnings were the Eastern Cape and Limpopo, both of which were more than R3,000 lower than Gauteng.

Minibus taxis and private cars are the two primary modes of transport for people living in Gauteng, according to a province-wide survey conducted by the Gauteng-City Region Observatory (GCRO).

Of the 13,700 respondents, 36% said they relied on private cars and 38% said they used minibus taxis, with the choice differing according to their primary occupation.

More than 70% of respondents in professions generally associated with higher incomes, such as managers and professionals, use private cars, which includes driving as well as riding as a passenger. Even among employed people in lower-income roles, more than a quarter use private cars.

In contrast, car usage drops significantly for students, job seekers and those in elementary occupations (gardeners, general workers and cleaners). For these groups, less than 25% said they used private cars.

Half of the survey’s respondents who are unemployed and looking for work said they relied on minibus taxis.

Most Gauteng residents fall in the lower socioeconomic class brackets and rely mostly on minibus taxis to get around. However, many say they opt for private cars when they can – either as drivers or passengers, according to the data from the Gauteng-City Region Observatory.

The GCRO’s 2023/24 Quality of Life survey shows that despite private cars being one of the most expensive options, the proportion of people driving has increased from 17% to 27% in the past 10 years.

The survey measures socioeconomic class on a one-to-10 scale based on factors such as household income, employment, education, medical aid membership and internet access. In general, the ratio of cars to other modes of transport increases with each wealth bracket: the higher the class, the more people use cars.

The survey also collects monthly transport spend from each respondent. The poorest spend as little as R200 a month on transport, while the wealthiest spend R2,000.

Despite Bolt and Uber bringing massive changes to the transport landscape in South Africa’s cities, the Gauteng-City Region Observatory’s 2023/24 Quality of Life survey shows that few Gauteng residents make regular use of e-hailing services.

Of the people 13,700 people surveyed, almost two-thirds said they never use e-hailing services at all. For those who do, most only e-hail a couple of times a month. Only 1.2% said they use ‘e-hailing or metered taxis’ as their main mode of transport.

The GCRO surveyed people across the province, including areas far from the big metros where e-hailing services are primarily available. The 2023/4 survey included a separate question on e-hailing specifically.

The majority of regular e-hailing users rely primarily on minibus taxis. They likely take Ubers when minibus taxis aren’t available. More women than men e-hail, and the majority of e-hailing taxi users are in the lower and middle social class brackets.

Unemployment is not evenly distributed across South Africa. The national unemployment rate was 32.1% for the July to September 2024 period, according to Statistics SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey.

The Western Cape is the only province with an unemployment rate below 30%. Currently at 19.6%, it has consistently remained below the national average since 2008.

Gauteng, the country’s economic powerhouse with the largest labour force of 7.6-million people, has an unemployment rate of 34%. KwaZulu-Natal, which has the second-largest labour force of 4-million people, has an unemployment rate of 31.2%. Its employment rate has been slightly below the national rate for more than a decade.

The Eastern Cape has the highest provincial unemployment rate at 37.2%, but the good news is that is has been improving since it peaked during the Covid pandemic.

Young people under the age of 35 make up half of South Africa’s working-age population. Yet only an estimated 6-million young people out of a potential 21-million are employed, according to Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for July to September 2024.

The 60.2% unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 24 is far higher than the global average, which the International Labour Organization estimates at 13%.

The unemployment rate is the percentage of the labour force that is unemployed. But the labour force excludes people classified as not economically active – including students, home-makers, people who are ill or have disabilities, people too young or old to work as well as discouraged work seekers.

In the 15 to 24 age group, 73% are not economically active, which is expected as many are still in the education system. In the 25 to 34 age group, where the unemployment rate is 40%, about one in four are classified as not economically active.

Remittance per capita highlights the effect of population size on how far incoming funds stretch. What would it look like if the total money sent home every year by citizens working abroad were divided equally among everyone in the country?

Nigeria, Africa’s second-largest remittance recipient in 2023, received $20-billion. But as the most-populous African nation, this amounts to just $91 a person – about R4 a day or R1,600 for the year.

For the 126-million people in Ethiopia, the remittance of $591-million only comes to $4 per citizen for the year. But in at least 13 countries including Ghana, Senegal, Lesotho, Egypt and The Gambia, remittances equate come to more than $100 a person, which gives us insight into the impact of sending money home.

In this thought experiment, Moroccans are the real winners. In a country with a population of 38-million, the $12-billion sent home last year equates to $320 a citizen.

Although exports still contribute more to the GDP of most African states, remittances are beginning to surpass some major export categories.

Kenya’s biggest goods export category – coffee, tea, mate and spices – makes up almost 25% of all its exports and is valued at $1.6-billion, according to 2023 UN Comtrade data.

Although Kenya’s exports constitute a significantly larger portion of its economy than remittances, the gap is narrowing, with remittances reaching $4-billion in 2023.

In Senegal, the $2.9-billion it received in remittances contributed the equivalent of one-third of the country’s export value to GDP.

Kenya’s central bank accounts for the ‘steady and resilient flow’ of remittances as a result of the development of mobile money platforms, internet-based channels of remittances and supportive policy.

The only African countries where remittances exceed total export value are Comoros and The Gambia.

There is a perception that charity, donations and development aid given by the Global North is what is keeping African citizens and economies afloat. Yet the combined totals of foreign aid and development assistance to Africa in 2022 was $37-billion less than formal remittances from the African diaspora.

Because remittance money is often directly sent to people in rural areas who may have no other sources of income, the decrease in aid to African countries likely means that family members working abroad have been bearing the cost of everyday necessities normally associated with foreign aid, such as medical care. The Covid pandemic illustrated recipients’ reliance on remittances when other finance flows declined.

Note: 2022 is the most recent year the World Bank has aid data for. As informal remittance channels are not accounted for, the data likely only represents a fraction of the actual value received.

Over the past two decades, global remittances have grown significantly. India, Mexico, China, the Philippines and France were the top five recipients of remittances last year, according to the World Bank.

African countries recorded more than $90-billion, with Egypt ranked the seventh-largest recipient worldwide, and Nigeria ninth.

Remittances are important for economic development, and the UN has identified them as key to achieving its Sustainable Development Goals. Countries are developing policies to encourage remittances, which support households and local economies.

The growth reflects not only how much easier it has become to send money ‘back home’, but also suggests a growing focus on data collection. While the World Bank’s figures, based on the IMF’s balance of payments guidelines, offer a window into global transfers, informal channels remain unaccounted for, suggesting the true scale of remits may be even larger.

Remittances to African countries surpassed $90-billion in 2023, according to data from the World Bank.

Citizens working in foreign countries often send a portion of their earnings ‘back home’ to family members. These funds are playing an increasingly important role in their home countries’ economies.

Egypt and Nigeria, two of Africa’s biggest economies and most-populous countries, each receive more than $20-billion a year in remittances. Egypt has a population of 112-million people while Nigeria has double that.

Nigeria’s $20-billion amounts to the equivalent of $90 per citizen, and remittances make up more than 5% of the country’s GDP.

Even though Egypt’s remittance amount has been falling since 2021, remittances still account for more than $200 per citizen and 6% of the country’s GDP. The Egyptian government has been developing policies to encourage and support its citizens working abroad to remit.

Remittances make up more than 5% of the national GDP of several larger African countries, including Morocco, Ghana, Egypt and Nigeria.

The funds workers send back to their families are especially significant for the small countries of Lesotho and The Gambia, which both have populations of below 3-million people.

In Lesotho, remittances made up nearly a quarter of the national GDP last year. However, this contribution has been decreasing in recent years due to the country’s growing diamond export industry.

In The Gambia, which has an agriculture-based economy, remittances accounted for nearly 27% of the GDP last year.

Governments have begun to take the contributions made by diaspora populations to their country’s economies seriously.

The central banks of Kenya, Uganda and The Gambia, for example, are improving data collection and reporting on remittance channels. Other countries are creating policy reforms to encourage sending money back home.

MTN shares have fallen by more than 40% over the past year, while its competitor Vodacom has seen only a modest decline on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

On 6 August, MTN’s share price fell to R72.70, sharply down from R140 on 1 August last year.

The decline in the share price can largely be attributed to the poor performance of its Nigerian subsidiary. The devaluation of the naira against the US dollar has severely affected its financial performance, the group said in its interim financials for 30 June 2024.

Despite improving its active data users and total subscriber numbers, MTN Nigeria reported a loss after tax of 519-billion naira for the six months to end June.

The naira has struggled to stabilise against the dollar since Nigeria ended its regime of regulated exchange rates in June 2023. This has led to its more than doubling against the dollar to around 1,590 naira.

Municipalities increased their electricity prices by 12.72% in July, raising the cost of 350kWh of prepaid electricity from R907 in June to R1,043 – an increase of R136.

This basic amount of electricity is enough to run a toaster, kettle, stove, fridge and some lights for a month, according to estimates from the Pietermaritzburg Economic Dignity and Justice Group.

Since January 2021, the price of 350kWh of electricity has increased by almost R400.

Although the old-age social grant has increased by R90 from R2,090 a month last year to R2,180 a month, the increased cost of electricity is tightening the screws for South Africa’s 4.1-million pensioners. 

Social grants should improve nutrition and help with the increasing cost of food, but ‘higher electricity costs are likely to remove money prioritised for monthly food purchases’, the NPO says.

South Africa’s gambling industry generated R47.2-billion in revenue in the past financial year, the highest amount ever recorded. This rocketing growth is being driven largely by online betting, which accounted for more than half the revenue, according to the National Gambling Board’s 2022/23 annual report.

When casinos closed down because of Covid-related lockdowns, gamblers turned to online gambling, with wagers made in just a couple of clicks on a computer or mobile device. In South Africa, about 80% of sports betting is done online.

Casino gambling, however, hasn’t quite recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In 2019/20, casinos were responsible for R18-billion of gambling revenue. When the pandemic hit that dropped to R9-billion. Last year, casino were still below pre-pandemic levels by about 6% at R17-billion.

More people have access to the internet and smartphones, which means punters no longer have to rely on physical outlets.

South Africans placed R418-billion worth of bets last year, an 80% increase from the R233-billion wagered in 2021/22.

Betting involves placing a wager through a bookmaker like PlayaBets and Easybet on the outcome of a specific event, usually a sports event, and can be done both in person or online.

In South Africa, about 80% of sports betting is done online, with wagers made with just a couple of clicks on a computer or mobile device. The total value of bets is significantly higher than overall revenue because these don’t include payouts and winnings are often ‘recycled’ to place further bets.

Well-known gambling companies such as Betway and Hollywoodbets dominate online betting – as well as advertising and sports sponsorship.

Newcomer SuperSportBet, the result of a partnership between Nigerian betting company KingMakers and MultiChoice, launched in January and is specifically targeting sports fans.

Betting accounted for more than half of South Africa’s gambling revenue of R47.2-billion in the past financial year, according to the National Gambling Board’s most recent annual report.

Casinos, on the other hand, accounted for just 37% of the total revenue in 2022/23, down from 84% in 2010.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a shift to online betting and gambling, triggered by pandemic-related shutdowns.

Wider access to the internet and the increase in the number of smartphones means gamblers no longer have to rely on physical outlets and can gamble anywhere and anytime.

Sports betting, which involves placing a wager through bookmakers such as EasyPlay or Yesplay on the outcome of a specific event, is very popular.

South Africans placed R418-billion worth of sports bets last year, an 80% increase from the R233-billion in 2021/22. The total value of bets is significantly higher than overall revenue because winnings are often ‘recycled’ to place further bets.

Online gambling is drawing in new, younger audiences, attracted by the excitement of risk and the prospect of quick gains.

There’s a concomitant rise in gambling addiction and self-exclusions, which is when people request to be banned from gambling venues or online sites. The number of self-exclusions has rocketed by more than 240% in the past four years, according to the National Gambling Board.

The number of people referred by the Responsible Gambling programme for treatment doubled to 2,299 in 2022/23 after a Covid-19 lull. Most of these people were in the 25-to-35-year age group.

More than half of the young adults (those between 18 and 34) surveyed by InfoQuest said they gambled because they needed money. Just under 10% said they gambled because they were depressed, addicted or needed to escape from reality. Almost 40% used their winnings to gamble again.

Among those surveyed, sports betting was the most-often-placed bet, with an average incidence of 12 times a month. 

Kenyans living abroad are contributing significantly to Kenya’s GDP by sending money to their families. They sent $4.2-billion home in 2023.

The Central Bank of Kenya says these remittances are an important contributor to the economy and it is developing policies to encourage and regulate this form of investment.

In May 2024, Kenya received just over $400-million in remittances. About half was sent from the US, $35-million from Saudi Arabia and $27-million from the UK. Tanzania ($6.5-million) was the source of the most remittances from other African countries.

Remittances accounted for 2.1% of Kenya’s GDP in 2013. Ten years later, this had increased to 3.9%. Revenue from exports that year accounted for less than 12%.

Most remits are sent to family, who use the money for food and household goods or to invest in land and building.

Mobile money services such as M-Pesa are the preferred way to transfer funds.

Prices of Brent crude oil, an international benchmark, have stabilised since the spike caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In August 2024, a barrel of Brent crude oil cost an average of $84, down from a peak average of $116 in July 2022, according to the department of mineral resources and energy.

In 2019, a barrel of Brent crude oil averaged $64. Fears of oil shortages and sanctions against Russia pushed crude oil prices up from February 2022.

The fluctuating Brent crude oil prices affects the cost of fuel in South Africa, where the basic fuel price makes up half the petrol price. The cost of a litre of 95 octane petrol in SA in August 2024 is R23.11, nearly R4 more expensive than it was pre-invasion (R19.62 in January 2022).

South Africa primarily imports Brent crude oil from Angola, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

Maize is critical to food security in Southern Africa, making up more than 20% of the average person’s daily diet (in kilocalories consumed). It’s the most-consumed grain in the region, according to data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

This season’s devastating decline in production of this staple crop is the result of a summer drought, caused by El Niño’s hot and dry weather patterns.

Three countries in the region have already declared a state of disaster: Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

More than 6.55-million people in Zambia, many of them children and women, now need humanitarian assistance, the UN says.

In Malawi, 4.2-million people are likely to be experiencing ‘high levels of acute food insecurity’ by September, the International Food Policy Research Institute reports.

Zimbabwe expects to produce 55% less maize than usual in 2024. The UN says about half the population is likely to go hungry as a result.

There has been a devastating decline in the production of maize across Southern Africa because of dry and hot weather caused by El Niño weather patterns.

Zimbabwe was one of three countries to declare a state of disaster. It expects to produce 55% less maize than usual in 2024. About half the population is likely to go hungry as a result, the UN says.

Zimbabwe will need to import 1-million tonnes of maize to make up the shortfall from its harvest, says Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of SA. Its imported maize will come from South Africa, which will ‘most likely only have 1.4-million tonnes to export because of its poor harvest’.

In the first two months of 2024, South Africa exported 224,130 tonnes of maize to Zimbabwe, which is almost half its regional export total of 463,000 tonnes.

Maize production in South Africa, the biggest maize producer in Southern Africa, is projected to drop by almost one-fifth this year.

The decline in maize production across the region is because of dry and hot weather caused by El Niño weather patterns. In Africa, maize is a staple food for millions of people.

Production of white maize, which is used to make pap, is projected to drop by a quarter and yellow maize yields are expected to fall by 10%.

The projected decrease is not as much as it was in 2016. That year, white and yellow maize yields dropped by an average of 22%, also because of El Niño.

South Africa is better off than its neighbours, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. All three countries have declared national disasters. This is because of ‘differences in farming practices, better timing of the planting window and the improved seed cultivars’, says Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of SA.

Maize crop yields are expected to drop by 18% in South Africa in 2024 because of heatwaves and droughts brought on by El Niño, a weather phenomenon that can last for months.

In North West, maize harvests are projected to drop by almost half from 2023’s yields. Other significant drops are expected in Limpopo (35%) and Free State (21%), which is South Africa’s main maize-producing province.

The impact of the hotter-than-usual summer months on the maize growing season have been felt across the region. Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe declared states of disaster earlier this year.

While still heavily impacted by the drier summer months, South Africa has fared better than its neighbours because of the ‘differences in farming practices, better timing of the planting window, and the improved seed cultivars’, says Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa.

The price of a 2.5kg bag of maize meal in South Africa has increased by R12 since January 2022, which is as far back as Statistics SA’s data goes. That’s a 44% increase on a staple food in just two-and-a-half years. A 5kg bag of maize meal is now the most expensive it has ever been at R71.21.

Other staple foods, such as white bread and tinned fish, increased by half as much over the same time period.

Maize shortages brought on by dry El Niño weather patterns are driving the price increases.

South Africa’s maize yields are projected to drop by 18% this year and in April the country made its first import of yellow maize in five years. The Argentinian imports docked in Cape Town. At the moment, it’s more cost-effective for the country to import maize meal.

In Southern Africa, maize is a staple food for millions of people eaten as pap, sadza and nshima. But dry and hot weather caused by El Niño has led to a devastating decline in production across the region.

El Niño is a weather phenomenon that is the result of the ocean’s surface temperature increasing, leading to a warmer atmosphere. From November to April, it typically brings heatwaves, below-average rainfall and drought to Southern Africa.

Three countries declared a state of disaster earlier this year: Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Zambia is experiencing its driest agricultural season in more than 40 years, according to the UN. The country lost almost half of the maize it planted, close to 1-million tonnes, describing it as ‘total crop failure’.

Malawi is likely to produce 45% less maize than usual in 2024, while Zimbabwe projects to produce 55% less. Millions of people across the region are expected to go hungry as a result.

About $29-billion was transferred across country borders in 2023 using mobile money services, $7-billion more than was sent in 2022, according to the GSM Association’s latest state of the industry report on mobile money.

Mobile money allows people who do not have a bank account to send money safely using a basic mobile phone. International remittances are commonly used by migrant workers to send money home to their families.

The amount of money being transferred has surged 262% in four years, from $8-billion in 2019 to $29-billion in 2023. The growth in international remittances is being driven by West Africa, the GSMA said.

There are about 835-million mobile money account holders in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the GSMA. Last year, 62-billion transactions were carried out in the region using mobile money. This is two-thirds of the world’s total mobile money transactions.

About 1.4-billion people worldwide do not have a bank account, the GSMA estimates. When people are excluded from formal financial services such as banks, transactions that can be conducted with a basic mobile phone offers them a secure way to send money across borders, save and, in some cases, apply for micro-loans and insurance.

The first mobile money providers emerged in the early 2000s in the Philippines. But the service took off once it was introduced in Sub-Saharan Africa with M-Pesa, which was created by a collaboration between Vodafone and Safaricom almost 20 years ago.

Sub-Saharan Africa has dominated the global mobile money landscape since 2013, and now boasts twice as many registered accounts as South and East Asia and the Pacific.

According to the GSMA’s 2024 state of the industry report, the region has 835-million registered mobile money accounts, nearly half of the world’s 1.75-billion accounts.

Two-thirds of the world’s mobile money transactions made in 2023 happened in Sub-Saharan Africa. People in the region did 62-billion transactions worth $912-billion. This is an almost 40% increase from 2022, when 45-billion transactions were conducted in the region.

Mobile money allows users to store and exchange money using a basic mobile phone. It differs from mobile banking in that users do not need a bank account to transact.

There are about 1.4-billion people worldwide who do not have a bank account, according to the GSM Association. When people are excluded from formal financial services, mobile money offers them a secure way to send money, including across borders.

The growth in African mobile money transactions has been largely driven by West and East Africa. East Africa accounts for 61% of transactions on the continent, whereas West Africa accounts for almost one-third of Africa’s total transactions.

There are 169 mobile money services in Africa, more than half of the world’s 310 providers, according to the 2024 GSMA state of the industry report.

Mobile money is an e-wallet service that allows users who do not have bank accounts to transact using a basic mobile phone.

M-Pesa, which launched in Kenya in 2007, is one of Africa’s most successful mobile money providers. Its 66.2-million customers in six countries were responsible for 33-billion transactions in the 2023 financial year, according to Vodafone, its owner. Services include payments, microloans and buying airtime.

With 72.5-million customers, MTN’s Momo is the continent’s largest service provider. It started in 2007 in Uganda, and now operates across 16 countries. Orange Money began in 2008 in Côte d’Ivoire. It is available in 17 countries in Africa and the Middle East. In 2022, it had 70-million customers.

Standard Bank customers spent R9.3-billion using digital wallets in the current financial year to pay for goods and services, according to data from the bank.

Digital wallets allow people to transact without a physical bank card, using their smartphones, tablets and watches.

Standard Bank customers increased their spending on digital devices by R3.4-billion to R9.3-billion in a year, up 57.6% from 2023.

Apple Pay was the most popular digital wallet for Standard Bank customers in 2024, accounting for 86% of transactions. Far behind were Samsung Pay (8%), Standard Bank Mobile (3%) and Google Pay (2%). Garmin Pay, Fitbit Pay and Masterpass made up the remaining 1%.

Banks are making it easier for customers to use digital wallets, especially as several banks have begun to close ATMs. In FNB’s financial year ending June 2023, FNB customers spent R37.5-billion using digital wallets – six times the value Standard Bank’s customers spent last year.

South Africans are increasingly relying on their mobile phones to do their banking. FNB data shows that the number of withdrawals made using mobile phones has increased over two years from 6-million transactions in the last six months of 2021 to 8.4-million in the same period in 2023.

FNB clients can make withdrawals using the banking apps on their phones at ATMs or at selected Spar stores.

Withdrawing cash using a banking app means people do not need to carry a physical bank card. FNB’s default withdrawal limit is R3,000, according to the bank’s website.

Banking apps also make it easier to send money to people without a bank account, as all a person needs to access the cash is the code the bank sends them as an SMS.

Updated: 1 August to specify retailers and withdrawal limit

New car prices were 4.7% higher in the first quarter of 2024 than they were at the same period in 2023, according to data from Transunion, an international credit bureau. Used car prices increased 2.1% over the same period.

The data also shows that the average loan for financed vehicles in the first quarter of 2024 rose to R391,000, up from R387,000 in Q1 2023.

More than half of the deals for vehicle financing are over the R300,000 mark, which has been the case since mid-2022.

The hefty price tag that comes with buying a car seems to be a contributing factor to the decrease in passenger vehicle sales.

Just over 161,000 new passenger vehicles were sold in the first six months of 2024, according to Naamsa. This is about 13,000 fewer vehicles than the 174,000 sold in 2023 (-7%).

FNB clients are increasingly using their e-wallets on their Android and Apple devices to pay for goods and services. E-wallets allow people to transact without a physical card, with customers using their smartphones, tablets and watches instead.

In the six months between July and December 2023, FNB account holders made 80-million e-wallet transactions. These were worth R31-billion, or an average of R388 per transaction. This is an eightfold increase from the 9.7-million transactions over the same six months in 2021, when transactions averaged R351 each.

FNB launched its digital cards at the end of July 2020. By December 2023, 5-million virtual cards had been activated. The significant rise in e-wallet transactions in South Africa is in line with a global shift towards more convenient and secure payment options.

There has been an increase in South Africans switching to hybrid vehicles, but few choose all-electric or plug-in hybrids.

Traditional hybrid vehicles, like the Toyota Prius, combine an internal combustion engine with a battery that charges while driving. In 2021, just over 600 traditional hybrid vehicles were sold in South Africa. By 2023, this number had increased tenfold to 6,484 vehicles sold.

In comparison, only 1,147 fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold in 2023, up from 384 in 2021.

According to AutoTrader, the most popular hybrid cars available in South Africa are the Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid, the Suzuki Grand Vitara Hybrid, and the Honda Fit HEV.

The local market is far from developed by global standards. Fewer than 1% of vehicle sales in South Africa in 2023 were fully electric or plug-in hybrids (excluding traditional hybrids), while the global average was 18%.

Fewer than 1% of the vehicles sold in South Africa in 2023 were fully electric or plug-in hybrids, according to the International Energy Agency. In contrast, 93% of vehicles sold in Norway and 60% in Sweden are electric or plug-in hybrids. The global average is 18%.

Fully electric cars are entirely battery-powered and must be charged. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles rely primarily on the battery for driving, with the combustion engine engaging when the battery is low.

One reason for South Africans’ slow uptake of plug-in and fully electric vehicles is the relatively low number of charging stations. There are at least 400 public charging stations in South Africa, compared to about 4,000 major brand petrol stations.

Despite this, the number of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in South Africa has increased from 384 in 2021 to 1,147 in 2023.

Sales of new passenger vehicles are down. Between January and June 2024, around 161,000 of these vehicles were sold.

Last year, more than 174,000 vehicles, or 13,000 more, were sold in the same time period. That’s a 7% decrease on the amount sold in 2023.

A contributing factor to the decrease in passenger vehicle sales is their rising cost. Data from Transunion, an international credit bureau, shows that new car prices were 4.7% higher in the first quarter of 2024 than they were at the same period in 2023. Used-car prices increased 2.1% over the same period.

On the up side, sales of hybrid and electric vehicles are on the increase, despite being a relatively small portion of monthly new vehicle sales.

The Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid and the Suzuki Grand Vitara Hybrid are among the most popular hybrid cars available in South Africa, according to AutoTrader.

Diamond mining production in South Africa has hit a 10-year low. Before 2023, the country produced an average of 8.5-million carats a year. By 2023, production had dropped to 6.1-million carats.

The reason for the drop is that De Beers’ Venetia diamond mine reached the end of its open-pit operations in December 2022. The mine accounted for 40% of South Africa’s diamond production, according to the Minerals Council.

South Africa remains among the top 10 diamond-producing countries, contributing 5% of the world’s diamonds. The largest producers are Russia with 37.3-million carats and Botswana, with an output of 25-million carats, according to 2023 Kimberley Process data.

De Beers is developing Venetia as an underground mine to extend its operational life until the 2040s. The company expects to extract 88-million carats from this new phase.

South Africa exported $1.85-billion worth of citrus, or 12% of the global total, in 2022, making it the world’s second-largest exporter.

But South Africa’s position in the market is being threatened by citrus black spot. This common fungal disease causes superficial blemishes on the skin of the fruit and spreads mostly through fruit-to-fruit contact and rain. Infected fruits are still safe for consumption.

The European Union has imposed legislative measures on fruit imported from SA, which include additional spray programmes and inspections which will cost the country’s citrus farmers and market more money.

The government and the Citrus Growers Association of SA have raised a dispute with the EU at the World Trade Organisation over these measures, which they deem ‘unfounded’ and ‘excessively trade restrictive’.

The citrus market was worth a reported $15.1-billion in 2022, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Today (4 July 2024) marks 100 days without loadshedding in 2024. There have been a total of 103 days without rolling blackouts in South Africa this year, but three of those were in January. The other 100 days have been continuous since 27 March.

Areas of the country including the City of Joburg, however, have been having ‘load rotation’, a localised form of power management.

The 100 days this year is the longest continuous period without scheduled loadshedding since 2020.

Last year was the worst year for loadshedding to date with outages on 335 days.

With just 83 days of loadshedding so far this year, 2024 is on track to be one of the best years for reduced loadshedding.

Fuelling the optimism is the announcement last week that Kusile’s unit 5 was now in operation, adding 800MW to the grid.

The world can’t get enough avocados, and South Africa is stepping up to meet the growing demand.

Exports have increased by 63% over the past decade, according to the SA Avocado Growers’ Association. About 74,4000 tonnes of avos were exported last year, just 9,500 shy of 2018’s record. ITC figures show the value of exports has more than tripled since 2012, reaching R1.63-billion in 2021.

South Africa is one of the top 10 exporters of the fruit globally and the second-biggest in Africa, after Kenya. Africa produces about 12% of the world’s avocados.

Global trade in the green gold is worth R120.3-billion, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, which gets its data directly from public customs records.

While Europe is a major importer of SA avocados, other markets are opening up. In the past 10 months, agreements have been put in place with India, China and Japan. Official shipments were expected to start mid-year.

The number of visitors to the Table Mountain National Park in Cape Town climbed to 2.8-million in 2023. This is a 56% increase on 2022, or an additional 1-million visitors.

The national park is home to Table Mountain and is a Unesco-designated World Heritage site. It had 3.16-million visitors in 2019, close to its record of 3.46-million set in 2017.

Also on the rise are visitors to the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway. Numbers shot up 44% last year to close to 1-million tourists, according to Wesgro, the tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape. The last time visitors to the cableway were over 1-million was in 2019.

This post-pandemic recovery is mirrored elsewhere, with tourist traffic to the rest of the Western Cape growing by more than a third to 7.7-million. Wesgro’s research shows the domestic market is helping to boost numbers.

Transnet transported 58-million fewer tonnes of coal, iron ore and other commodities in the 2022/3 financial year than it did 10 years ago, with coal making up a third of its freight.

The state-owned entity attributed its reduced rail capacity to underinvestment in network rehabilitation, vandalism, disputes over locomotive contracts, and sabotage.

This capacity issue is a problem for producers like Thungela, which might need to stockpile export-bound coal, resulting in fewer tonnes of coal exported. Such disruptions have severe economic implications for South Africa, a leading coal exporter.

Transnet’s general freight business saw a decrease of 11-million tonnes in 2022/23 compared with 2021/22. This was due to a weak economic climate and ‘operational challenges’.

More of South Africa’s employees feel involved in and enthusiastic about their work than those in other parts of the world.

According to Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report, 29% of South African employees surveyed are engaged. This percentage has been steadily increasing and is significantly higher than the sub-Saharan Africa (20%) and global (23%) averages. In comparison, about 17% of those surveyed in Kenya and Nigeria were engaged employees.

The proportion of actively disengaged employees in South Africa has been falling over the past few years. These, Gallup explains, are employees who have a miserable job and are actively seeking a new one. At 11.7%, South Africa’s rate is lower than both the global (15%) and regional (17%) averages.

Engaged employees have higher levels of wellbeing, lower absenteeism rates and are more productive, says Gallup.

African countries have leapfrogged fixed-line technology and gone straight to mobile. There are 89 mobile phones for every 100 people living in the countries classified as Sub-Saharan Africa by the World Bank, but fewer than one landline (0.6) per 100 people (2022 figures).

Some African countries, such as South Africa (~167) and Kenya (~122), are well over the world average of 108 mobile phones per 100 people. Nigeria is close with ~102.

But the percentage of people in Africa who use the internet remains low: 36% compared with 92% in the US, according to World Bank 2021 figures. The global average was 63%.

There were 489-million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2022, according to a recent GSMA report. That’s less than half (43%) of the population.

Only 287-million of them used mobile internet – a penetration rate of 25%. The cost of smartphones is a key reason why.

South Africa’s unemployment rate has become a pressing issue for the country in the 30 years since the transition to democracy. The lowest recorded rate was 16.2% in 1995.

Although the methodology used to track unemployment has been refined over the years, this figure still stands in stark contrast to the highest rate of 35.3%, recorded in the fourth quarter of 2021. The most recent unemployment rate is 32.9%.

Statistics SA defines the unemployment rate as the proportion of people in the labour force between 15 and 64 who were not employed but available for work and actively looking for it. This number first surpassed 30% in 2003 and has consistently stayed above this threshold since the third quarter of 2020.

The so-called expanded unemployment rate, which includes discouraged job seekers, has remained above 40% since mid-2020, highlighting the country’s broader economic challenges.

Ten times as many people in South Africa receive grants in 2024 compared with 1996. Almost 30 years ago the largest group of beneficiaries were the elderly; in 2024, it is children.

The gradual rollout of the child support grant from 1998 and the introduction of the temporary Covid-19 SRD grant in 2020 have contributed to the increase in the number of people benefiting from grants rising from 25-million to 28-million.

The government introduced the Covid-19 grant for people between 18 and 60 who required financial support due to government restrictions during the pandemic because they had no work and weren’t benefiting from other grants. This grant’s deadline has been extended to March 2025 and benefits 9-million people. It is considered a test case for the rollout of a basic income grant offering R350 a month – the lowest of the grants. The child support grant and grant-in-aid follow at R530 each.

Anglo American employs almost 60,000 people globally, with South Africa accounting for 60% of its workforce.

Founded in South Africa in 1917, the diversified miner is listed in London and has recently been subject to unsuccessful takeover attempts by Australian miner BHP.

Anglo CEO Duncan Wanblad has outlined plans to turn Anglo into a radically simpler business, which include splitting off De Beers, its diamond business, as well as its nickel and platinum assets. It also plans to divest from its steelmaking coal assets.

Over the past year, Anglo American has been focusing on renewable energy metals such as copper and high-quality iron ore.

Anglo first entered Canada in the 1960s and has 1,200 people working on its diamond mines there. It opened its first South American office in the 1970s and still has valuable iron ore assets in Brazil, where its workforce numbers 4,000 employees.

The number of companies listed on the JSE, South Africa’s securities exchange, has reached a 30-year low.

Listings peaked at 669 listings in 1998, but the dot-com crash led to 128 companies delisting within 2 years. There was a brief resurgence between 2003 and 2008 with the introduction of AltX, which targets small- and medium-sized enterprises. This was cut short by the global financial crisis.

Delisting is a global phenomenon and not isolated to South Africa, says Sam Mokorosi, JSE’s head of origination and deals.

Companies often delist due to mergers, acquisitions or relocating abroad, but the JSE has struggled to attract enough new listings to offset these losses.

Mokorosi said high IPO activity is typically driven by GDP growth and supportive sector policies.

To boost listings, the JSE is reducing listing bureaucracy, introducing dual-class shares, revising auditor accreditation and allowing secondary listings for companies primarily listed on the Hong Kong Exchanges.

Despite the spike in attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea sending more ships along Africa’s coast, traffic at Durban’s port has held steady.

According to Transnet statistics, 744 ships arrived at Durban in the first quarter of this year, which is 29 fewer than the 773 ships that arrived in the same period last year.

A possible reason for this is the time ships have to wait to dock at Durban, South Africa’s busiest port. In mid-April, the wait time was an average of 4 days, according to Portcast’s port congestion dashboard. This was an improvement from March, when the wait time was 7 days.

Durban has long been known to have congestion issues, Transnet chair Andile Sangqu acknowledged at a media briefing in April. He said the Durban container terminal, which handles about 65% of the port’s container cargo, had remained unchanged since 1963.

The cost of a 400g jar of peanut butter has increased by 19% in a year, with a shortage of peanuts and high sugar prices contributing to the hike. The average price increased from R38.75 to R46.15 between March 2023 and 2024, according to Statistics SA.

Tiger Brands, which manufactures Black Cat, says 70% of its peanuts are locally sourced. But it says South African farmers are not planting as many peanuts and groundnuts, choosing other in-demand crops such as white beans, sugar beans and soybeans instead.

Drought and floods in South America has also led to pressure on supply and fewer peanuts are being imported. Argentina has had 3 years of drought, while floods in Brazil affected their peanut crops.

Peanuts from other African countries are generally not imported as they have a risk of high aflatoxin levels. Several SA brands of peanut butter were recalled this year after testing found high levels of aflatoxin, a toxin produced by fungi.

Shell has confirmed that it plans to sell its South African downstream assets – its service stations and refinery. It will, however, retain its upstream business – the explorative and extractive activities in the Karoo and off the Wild Coast.

The energy group owns about 40,000 fuel service stations around the world. Half the stations are in the Americas. There are 591 retail outlets in South Africa, its 13th-most among the 61 countries where Shell has a presence.

Its refinery in Durban has been inactive since the end of March 2022, when Shell and BP decided to suspend operations and spending.

Shell said in May its decision to divest in South Africa was part of a comprehensive review of its global operations. For the past 10 years, it has been selling off downstream assets in Australia and Africa. It has also been scaling down in Malaysia and South America.

Johannesburg is facing a copper cable theft crisis. Between July 2022 and June 2023, there were an average of 6 thefts a day. This is an increase from 6 years ago, when there were an average of 4 a day.

The highest number of cable theft incidents in a month was July 2022, when there were 273 incidents, according to City Power’s latest annual report.

The theft has become so bad that City Power has turned to the military for help.

‘The people who attack our network are highly sophisticated and militarised. The type of firearms they carry, we cannot withstand it as civilians, and we have called on law enforcement to assist us,’ Sergeant Thela, general manager of risk and security at City Power, told Newzroom Afrika last week.

Cable theft was behind the fire on the M1 highway earlier this month. It will cost Joburg R23-million to repair. Residents in parts of the city lost power for a week.

Ships avoiding attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea are sailing past the Cape of Good Hope. Neither Cape Town nor Durban have seen an uptick in ships docking to refuel.

One reason why ships bypass Durban is because of how congested it is. In mid-April, the average wait time was 4 days, according to Portcast, which tracks global shipping carriers. 

The average wait time at Mombasa in Kenya or Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo is less than 2 days. In China’s Shanghai port, where 336 ships were waiting to dock between 15 and 21 April, the wait time was 1.1 days.

Mombasa and Pointe Noire have seen a marked increase in the number of ships docking. According to the Portcast dashboard, Point Noire’s vessel count rose from a 3-month average of 15 ships to 20 ships in one week in December 2023. Mombasa’s rose from an average of 15 vessels a week to 23.

South Africa’s ports are missing out on revenue generated by the increase in commercial ships being rerouted around the southern tip of Africa.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels started targeting ships on the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestinians in November 2023. More than 50 ships were attacked between January and March this year.

As a result, shipping companies are choosing to avoid the Suez Canal. About one-tenth of maritime trade volume usually passes through the Suez Canal, but the ships are now being sent via Africa instead.

The number of ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope has almost doubled to 7,078 so far this year from 3,815 in 2023, according to PortWatch, a project of the IMF and Oxford University.

The number of ships docking at Durban, SA’s busiest port, has not increased, however. This may have to do with the waiting time. In mid-April, ships had to wait 4 days to dock.

South Africa is way behind countries such as the UK when it comes to sales of electric vehicles. Although the countries have similar-sized populations – 60-million for South Africa and 67-million for the UK – the latter sold hundreds of thousands more EVs last year.

South Africa only sold 1,080 electric vehicles in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency, an independent organisation that focuses on the global energy sector. More than 450,000 were sold in the UK and 8.1-million were sold in China, the most in the world.

The high price range, lack of variety and charging stations are some reasons why South Africans have been slow to take to the green road.

Most of the electric vehicles available in SA are high-end cars from manufacturers such as Volvo, Porsche and Mini. With a starting price of R687,000, the GWM ORA 03 is one of the cheapest EVs in South Africa, according to cars.co.za.

South Africans’ appetite for debt has increased even though one-third of the country’s 27-million credit holders are struggling to pay back their loans.

According to data from the National Credit Regulator, there were 15.5-million credit applications between July and September last year. Only 31% of these applications were approved, which is a significant decrease from 2007 when about 60% of loans were approved.

About 6-million people were three or more months behind on their repayments last year, which is three times higher than the number of consumers who were in arrears in 2007.

Lending institutions generally have a low tolerance for risk, says Ans Gerber, the head of data insights at Experian, a credit bureau. They also take into account the ability of consumers to pay back their loans, which is being constrained by high-interest rates and South Africa’s high cost of living.

Almost one-third of the people in South Africa with credit are struggling to repay their debts. That’s 10-million people who are 3 months or more behind in debt repayments, or who are facing legal action and adverse listings, according to Credit Bureau Monitor data for September 2023. That’s 10-million out of the 27-million South Africans with credit.

Part of the increase is because more people have access to credit today than they did previously. In 2007, for example, 16.8-million people had credit and 6-million were behind with their repayments. That’s nearly 36%, marginally lower than today’s ratio of 37%.

Most of money owed is for mortgages and vehicle loans, as well as debt on credit and store cards. The Credit Monitor Bureau collects the data from credit providers, courts and utility service providers.

South Africans are R2.3-trillion in debt, according to the National Credit Regulator’s consumer credit market report. This includes home and car loans as well as credit and store cards.

South Africans’ debt comprises mortgages (52%); secured credit, which includes pension-backed loans, furniture and motor accounts (22%); credit facilities, which include bank overdrafts, credit, garage and retail cards (14%). Other debt, such as unsecured and short-term loans, makes up 12%.

The number of credit consumers in South Africa has doubled in the past 16 years, but the growth includes the number of consumers with access to credit. In 2007, 16.8-million people had credit. By 2023, the number had grown to 27-million.

A third of people with credit are struggling to repay their accounts.

Banks granted 80% of consumer credit. Retailers granted 4% and non-bank financiers provide 8%. The remaining 8% is attributed to ‘other credit providers’.

Five years after opening to the public in 2010, Gautrain was making around 15-million trips a year. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and trips on the urban high-speed train dropped to 2.6-million. Although things have started to improve, rates are still far from what they used to be.

In the 2022/23 financial year, the number of trips increased to 7-million, a 64% increase on the year before. However, numbers would need to double to match what they were in 2015/16.

‘Like most public transport systems, Gautrain has had to adapt to a new normal of a society that no longer requires public transport in the same shape and form as before,’ says William Dachs, the CEO of the Gautrain Management Agency.

Gautrain operates across Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni and connects to OR Tambo International Airport. The agency has recently introduced promotions such as student discounts and half-price trips in efforts to attract commuters.

Eskom’s ability to generate electricity in 2023 was significantly affected by breakdowns at its power plants. The power utility says these included electrical trips at generating units, outage ‘slips’ as well as boiler tube failures, which prevent the creation of steam to drive power-generating turbines.

Eskom CEO Calib Cassim said, however, that these were not the only causes of the 32% unplanned capacity loss. An unprotected employee strike in mid-2022 had a devastating effect on the system. The protest action, which fell within the 2022/23 financial year, was sparked by a failure in wage negotiations after the National Union of Mineworkers’ demanded a 15% increase.

Cassim has suggested that either deliberate sabotage or neglect of power stations during the stayaway exacerbated the coal-handling operations. Eskom had to pay R2.5-billion in overtime because of breakdowns at its power plants. This is an increase from the R2.1-billion paid in 2022.

Cocoa, like many food crops, is consumed globally but produced regionally. Cocoa trees predominantly grow in countries within the belt between 10° north and south of the equator, with West Africa contributing two-thirds of global cocoa production. Their natural habitat is in the lower storey of rainforests where rainfall is high throughout the year, and the temperature is relatively uniform.

Sunflower oil production is centred in Ukraine and Russia, notably affected by price spikes during the Ukraine-Russia conflict. China is the producer of various staple foods such as mushrooms and spinach, with over 90% grown within its borders. Indonesia and the Philippines produce half of the world’s coconuts, while Turkey leads in hazelnut production, and olives are primarily from Spain, Italy, and North Africa.

In the southern hemisphere, Madagascar produces a third of the world’s vanilla, while Peru and Bolivia dominate quinoa production, and Brazil and Bolivia are known for Brazil nuts.

Cocoa prices have risen because most of the cocoa is grown in just a handful of countries in west Africa.

Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, which account for more than 60% of global cocoa production, have been hit by bad weather related to the El Niño phenomenon, resulting in hundreds of thousands of hectares in lost production.

There are other confounding factors, such as illegal mining, which has overtaken many farms in Ghana and degraded the land, making it unsuitable for cocoa production.

Because cocoa bean production has dropped, the price of cocoa in global markets has increased dramatically. In New York, cocoa futures prices have doubled since January from just over $4,000 per tonne to more than $9,000/tonne this week. Cocoa futures are financial contracts that allow buyers and sellers to agree on the delivery of cocoa at a predetermined price.

In 2023, Shoprite had a workforce of 153,726 employees, which was over 60,000 more than Pick n Pay. According to Shoprite’s quarterly report issued in March 2024, the number of people it employed had increased to over 160,000. This makes Shoprite the second-largest employer in South Africa after the government. On the other hand, Pick n Pay’s employee numbers have remained relatively static, hovering around the 90,000 mark since 2019.

Shoprite’s Checkers Sixty60 and Pick n Pay’s ASAP delivery apps have become an integral part of South African culture. Although it is difficult to obtain exact numbers on home deliveries and app downloads, it appears that Checkers Sixty60 might be slightly ahead. The service covers 505 locations compared with Pick n Pay’s 400. In its 2023 integrated report, Pick n Pay reported ‘over 4-million installs,’ while Checkers Sixty60 claimed 4.5-million downloads of their app in a recent promotional video.

In 2007, Shoprite and Pick n Pay were on par in almost every respect: They had roughly the same revenue and employed the same number of people (~60,000).

Just over a decade later, it is different. Shoprite started pulling ahead of Pick n Pay in 2008. Since then, it has rapidly been increasing its dominance.

In 2023, Shoprite reported an annual revenue of R215-billion. It is R106-billion more than Pick n Pay for the same period. Shoprite makes more than R4-billion a week in revenue, or nearly R600-million a day.

Those are eye-watering numbers. Even people inside Shoprite seem awed by the success. Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said in a presentation: ‘I joined Shoprite in ‘97, and in those days, it took 19 years to do R10-billion in revenue. Today, we do R10-billion in revenue every 15 days.’

Except for a brief time in the early 2010s, Shoprite has always had more stores than Pick n Pay. In the past three years, it has been on a new store drive.

Started as an 8-store family franchise in the Western Cape in 1979, Shoprite now has more than 3,500 stores. It adds a new store every day.

Between 2014 and 2023, the number of Shoprite stores (including franchises) increased from 1,581 to 3,543. Pick n Pay went from 1,128 to 2,204 stores over the same period.

Almost 90% of Shoprite’s stores are in South Africa. It has a presence in 9 other countries on the continent, mostly in southern and eastern Africa, including Namibia (163 stores), Eswatini (62) and Zambia (52). It has 7 stores in Ghana.

Over 90% of Pick n Pay’s stores are in South Africa. The remaining stores are in 7 countries, including Zimbabwe (72) and Namibia (35).

The price of cocoa, the key ingredient of chocolate, increased by 68% in the past year. The reason? Extreme weather conditions in two West African countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Together they produce 58% of the world’s cocoa.

Cocoa trees grow best in the belt between 10° north and south of the equator. The trees’ natural habitat is in the lower storey of rainforests where rainfall is high throughout the year and temperatures are uniform.

Heavy rains in 2023 damaged the crop in those two countries, but shifting rainfall patterns and hotter temperatures in West Africa lie at the root of a bigger problem. Researchers project that by 2050 the areas suitable for cocoa production will shrink dramatically.

About 73% of the world’s cocoa beans come from Africa. Cameroon and Nigeria follow Ecuador to make up the top 5 cocoa-producing countries.

The minimum wage in South Africa is R25.42 an hour. This equates to just over R4,000 a month for 20 days’ work. Last year it was R23.19 an hour.

It’s an amount that doesn’t go far in South Africa in 2024.

The bulk of a minimum wage could easily be swallowed up by basic services like transport and electricity, leaving very little for food, rent, schooling costs and so on.

Using data published by the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group (PMBEJD), taxi transport can easily cost R1,600 a month for someone travelling between their home and the nearest business district. This assumes they travel 5 days a week, and take two taxis in each direction.

PMBEJD collects prepaid electricity data from the Msunduzi Municipality and, in July 2023, the cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity increased from R2.25/kWh to R2.59/kWh. Typical usage is 350kWh a month, meaning many households spend about R900 a month on electricity.

Between 2018 and 2023 1,310 energy projects were registered with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa). The majority of these projects (85%) were under 1MW.

The majority of the Nersa registrations under 1MW are by businesses taking charge of their electricity security after severe blackouts in the past 3 years.

Agriculture and real estate businesses registered over half of these <1MW energy installations. Unsurprisingly, solar made up the vast majority of these. The few exceptions were:3 businesses registered wind energy, andCathedral Peak Hotel in KwaZulu-Natal registered a hydropower plant in 2019Almost a quarter of the 1MW and smaller installations are in the economic hub of Gauteng.All the smaller registered energy projects in the province are solar PV, presumably rooftop and parking lot cover installations. 40% of the installations were for the real estate industry, which includes malls, office buildings and residential properties.

Between 2018 and 2023, businesses registered 1,310 energy projects with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).

The majority of these projects (85%) were under 1MW. A 1MW installation is roughly enough to power 650 average homes. These ‘smaller’ installs are primarily those done by businesses, farms and shopping centres looking to bolster their energy supply against the threat of loadshedding. In the last 3 years, the country experienced 495 days of blackouts.

Nersa’s registrations do not include the much larger REIPP projects like the solar and wind farms that are focused on putting power into the national grid.

Of the 1,310 projects licensed, 1,109 have been installs of under 1MW. There are also 130 projects between 1MW and 10MW and 71 projects larger than 10MW. The caption of this chart has been updated.

Eskom has signed up 6,180MW of independently produced renewable power in its last 4 bid windows. It’s a 10th of Eskom’s generation capacity. But Eskom is only using a third of this renewable power, according to its daily generation reports. In November, Eskom used an average of 2,100MW of renewable energy. Eskom’s own wind farm generates 100MW.

To integrate new renewable energy generated in the Northern, Eastern, and Western Cape into the national grid, Eskom must add 14,218km of transmission lines by 2032. The deadline for this addition is 9 years away. Over the past 15 years, Eskom installed 7,200km of transmission lines at an average of 451km per year. To meet the 2032 deadline, Eskom will need to triple its efforts.

The Transmission Development Plan outlines two deadlines for Eskom: 2,893km of transmission lines installed by 2027 and 11,325km by 2032. These lines will extend the 350,000km-long national grid.

By early December Eskom had shed more than 6,800 hours of electricity in 2023. This is almost double the amount lost in 2022. For 8 years, stage 2 was the most common stage of loadshedding. However, 2023 saw a shift: South Africa saw 1,940 hours of stage 4 loadshedding, the most common stage. Stages 3 and 6 followed. The country only had 1,326 hours with no loadshedding. This was a drop from 4,980 in 2022.

South Africa had more hours of stage 6 loadshedding in 2023 than in any previous year. It first had stage 6 in 2019.

Eskom struggled with breakdowns, costing it a third of its generation in 2023. 9 years ago, breakdowns affected just over a tenth of its generation.

In May South Africa imported over 880MW of solar panels from China. It coincided with the month with the highest stages of loadshedding.

China committed about $170-billion in loans to African countries between 2000 and 2020. Most of it was to develop infrastructure under the Belt and Road Initiative, a grand plan to connect Asia with Africa and Europe.

About 70% of the money was funnelled to 10 countries, with Angola receiving the most. It spent a third of its $45-billion on Sonangol, the state-owned oil company.

Nearly a third of the loans was directed to the transport sector. The biggest amounts funded railway projects in Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria as well as South Africa’s Transnet locomotives.

About $60-billion was spent on energy projects, including the Kusile and Medupi coal power stations.

Chinese loans tapered off during the Covid-19 pandemic and no new energy projects have been added since 2020.

Each month the money for 19-million people who rely on SA Social Security Agency grants is paid into 12-million bank accounts. An increasing number of these (59%) are at commercial banks, with the remainder paid via the Postbank or the Post Office.

State-run Postbank took over the administration of payments in October 2022, the third change in 5 years. The transition has been difficult and there are regular reports of delays and other ‘glitches’.

As a result, grantees have been seeking more reliable options. In the past 12 months, Capitec Bank increased its number of grant account holders by almost 1.1-million to 3-million while Postbank lost 1.8-million customers.

The market for electric vehicles in South Africa is still small but it’s growing quickly. 712 electric vehicles have been sold in South Africa in the first nine months of 2023. This is 40% more than were sold in the whole of 2022. And 2022 electric vehicle sales were already more than double the previous year.

Despite heading for a record year of sales, fully electric vehicles make up just 0.3% of South Africa’s passenger vehicle sales.

Electric vehicles still fall at the high end of the market with most buyers opting for the Volvo XC40, BMW iX or BMW X3, which cost between R1-million and R2-million. In the first 9 months of this year, 351 electric BMWs were bought and 144 Volvos. This is followed by 72 Minis and 69 Mercedes.

South Africa's child support grant has been below the food poverty line – the amount it costs to buy the food needed to meet a child's basic nutritional needs – for more than a decade, and the gap is growing.

Every year, the government increases the grant by an average of R20, but recent food price increases have been far higher than in previous years. The most recent poverty line is R750 a month, which is 15%, or nearly R100, higher than it was a year ago. The gap between the child grant and the food poverty line now stands at R250.

In 2012, the child support grant covered 76% of the minimum amount of food for a month prescribed by the poverty line. The latest grant covers only 67%.

It was expensive to buy eggs in October. The cost of 60 eggs rose from R136 to R162 between September and October, according to prices collected by the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group, which tracks the cost of food for families living on low incomes.

Supermarket shelves have been low on eggs the past few weeks because of an avian flu outbreak, which led to 1 in 5 egg-laying hens being culled or dying, the Financial Mail reported.

The country has had outbreaks before, but the usual control methods have been less effective this time around, says Shahn Bisschop, a specialist poultry vet from the University of Pretoria.

More than half of Africa's 138,000 dollar millionaires live in South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco. South Africa has the most, and Johannesburg is the city with the highest number of people (14,600) with assets worth more than $1-million. Africa's wealthiest individual is Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, who has a net worth of $13.5-billion. He is followed by South Africa's Johann Rupert ($10.7bn) and Nicky Oppenheimer ($8.4bn). Three-quarters of Africa's 23 dollar billionaires live in South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt – which is also where you’ll find 9 of the continent’s 10 wealthiest people.

South Africa spends more on servicing its R4.7-trillion debt than it spends on any other service, bar education and social grants. In 2022/3, it spent R307.2-billion honouring its debt – R47.7-billion more than it spent on health and R79-billion more than it spent on safety and security. The only two other items in its R2.17-trillion budget that cost the government more are social welfare (+R51-billion) and education (+R127.9-billion). The government says it has set aside R1.1-trillion to service its debt in the next three years. Fuelled by pandemic borrowing and slowing economic growth, government debt increased by R792-billion between 2020/1 and 2022/3.

African imports of solar panels from China are increasing rapidly, driven largely by South Africa, according to data released by Ember, which tracks Chinese customs data. Chinese exports account for about 80% of the global solar panel market. In the first 7 months of 2023, South Africa imported panels equivalent to 3.7GW, up from 0.6GW in the same period last year. South Africa was the 20th largest solar power producer in the world in 2021 – and the largest producer in Africa. It generated 6.65 terawatt hours (TWh), compared with world No 1 China’s 327TWh that year.

South Africa's debt has been spiralling since the 2008 global financial crisis. Exacerbated by pandemic-related borrowing in 2020, the government's total debt is now R4.7-trillion. Most of the funds have been raised on the domestic bond market. Factors such as failing state-owned companies, wasteful expenditure, loadshedding and unemployment mean the economy isn’t generating enough tax to balance the budget. With an election in 2024, spending is likely to remain high, with the debt burden rising even further.

It's getting more expensive to have a sweet tooth. Sugar, sweets and desserts have increased by 18.5% over the past year. It's the highest increase of all the food items. Vegetables cost 16.6% more in August 2023 than in 2022. Although milk, eggs and cheese are 11.9% more expensive, it is now almost 14% cheaper to buy cooking oil. Food and the cost of electricity – which went up by 15.1% – contributed to the slight increase in year-on-year inflation.

Women hold 180 of the 515 board positions (35%) at the JSE's Top 40 companies. Despite making up 46% of South Africa’s economically active population, they hold 115 of the 468 executive positions (25%). That women are not better represented at the C-suite level 'reflects the lack of progress in ensuring that corporate culture supports the advancement of female employees,' Just Share says in a new report. There are 5 female chairpersons and 4 female CEOs in the Top 40. Bidvest is the only company with gender parity or better at board and executive level: 75% of its board are women, and 50% of its executives. Only two other companies have more than half their board seats filled by women: Impala Platinum and Exxaro.

Six countries were invited to join the Brics grouping of major emerging economies at its summit held in Johannesburg from 22 to 24 August 2023. Five countries are in the Middle East and Africa: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia. The sixth is Argentina. If all the countries accept the invitation the bloc with increase from five members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – to 11 on 1 January 2024. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said on Al Arabiya TV that his country will review the details of membership before making a decision to join.

Nearly 500,000 people in Cape Town used minibus taxis to travel to and from work and school in 2020. According to StatsSA's National Household Travel Survey, 325,000 of these people were travelling to work and 147,000 were learners – about a quarter of all commuters and a fifth of all learners. The city's learners and workers were left stranded in August 2023 by an 8-day South African National Taxi Council strike. Santaco's protest centred on a city by-law that allows authorities to impound vehicles for violations. Both private and public transport services were severely affected.

Eskom's two open-cycle gas turbines, Ankerlig and Gourikwa, which run off diesel, were designed to be used during peak periods and in emergencies. But the power utility has been using them more often. In its 2022/23 financial year, Eskom reports that it generated 3,018 gigawatt hours (GW/h) of electricity from its open-cycle gas turbines – a big increase on the 1,826GW/h it generated from them in 2021/22. Its diesel bill more than doubled from R8.6-billion in 2021/22 to R21-billion in 2022/23. So far this financial year – April, May, June and July – Eskom has spent an average of R3-billion a month on diesel. Last year’s average monthly spend was R1.8-billion.

South Africans love their beer, but it might be news to some people that the country is the 12th biggest beer producer in the world. It's also by far the biggest in Africa. South Africa produced almost twice as much beer as Nigeria in 2022.

But South Africa pales in comparison with China, which produced 36-billion litres in 2022 – that's 20% of the world's beer.

More than 189-billion litres of the brew were produced globally last year. The top-12 beer-producing countries were responsible for two-thirds of that total.

The Outlier's grocery basket covers the prices of the same 12 staple items from eight retailers: Woolworths, Checkers, Pick n Pay, Spar, Food Lover’s Market, Shoprite, Boxer and Makro. In July, the average cost was R480, slightly cheaper than in June. Woolworths was the most expensive retailer based on our basket, at R510.88. All the other retailers came in at under R500. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive basket is R84, which is much bigger than June’s difference of R55. A drop in the price of sunflower oil is the main reason for this.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative is a UN-brokered deal that allowed Ukraine to ship grain through a Russian blockade from July 2022. About 32.9-million tonnes of grain and oilseeds was shipped to 45 countries, including 10 in Africa. Russia pulled out of the deal on 17 July and bombed Ukraine’s ports, destroying 60,000 tonnes of grain. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on 27 July that he would send free grain to Zimbabwe, Mali, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Somalia. African leaders, including South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, responded that they would rather the grain deal be reinstated.

After Nigeria’s fuel subsidy was scrapped by President Bola Tinubu in May, the price more than doubled from 238.11 naira per litre to 545.83 naira per litre.

The subsidy, introduced in the 1970s, was expensive for the government. PWC estimates it cost $30-billion over 18 years.

It also created an incentive for smuggling petrol to neighbouring countries, where it was sold at higher prices. An estimated 58-million litres a day was smuggled out of the country in 2022.

Nigeria’s fuel price remains one of the lowest in Africa. In July it was 617 naira per litre ($0.78). South Africa’s fuel price on 24 July was $1.26 per litre, Ghana’s was $1.14 and Kenya’s was $1.38.

At some retailers, the price went up significantly between May and June. This brand of sugar was most expensive at Checkers and Shoprite in June, costing R69.99 for the 2.5kg bag.

The price surge stems from substantial increases that were passed on by the South African Sugar Association to all producers and customers due to cost pressures, according to an email reply from the Woolworths press office. The association said it could not respond to our questions.

Botswana has a reached a new agreement with DeBeers which gives it a larger portion of the diamonds mined in the country to sell. Under the new agreement the state-owned Okavango Diamond Company (OKD) will get 30% of the diamonds mined by Debswana, a joint venture between the Botswana government and De Beers. OKD previously got 25%, with the remainder going to DeBeers. By the end of the 10-year agreement OKD’s share will increase to 50%.

The June 2023 grocery basket marks a year since we started collecting and comparing grocery prices. We started collecting prices for four stores and now collect eight. Last year sunflower oil saw a large price increase as a result of the Ukraine war, poor climate conditions and poor harvests. Ukraine and Russia are the two largest producers of sunflower oil in the world. A year later the sunflower oil is one of the few items in our basket that has decreased in price compared with a year ago.

We’ve been collecting our grocery prices for exactly a year and since June 2022 a lot has changed. We started out comparing the prices of nine basic goods across four retailers: Woolworths, Checkers, Pick n Pay and Spar. That has now doubled to eight retailers with the addition of Food Lover’s Market, Shoprite, Boxer and Makro.For June’s new basket of 12 staple items, Pick n Pay was the most expensive at R505.88.For the third month in a row, Makro’s basket emerged as the cheapest option at R450.99.

Your eyes weren’t deceiving when you saw the price of a bag of onions in May. The price of this cook’s staple has increased by 70% and now costs more than R10 a kilo than it did in 2022

Inflation decreased to 6.3% in May from 6.8% in April.

The price of a barrel of crude oil is a big driver in the increase in the petrol price – it costs almost a third more than it did in 2019 – driven up over the past year because of the war in Ukraine. But it is not the only factor. South Africa buys its oil in US dollars, and since January 2019, the US dollar exchange rate went from R14.9 to the dollar to R18.99 – making the crude oil we buy that much more expensive.

11.9% drop in electricity generated in SA

In May 2023, we switched over to the cheapest, most comparable sunflower oil, milk and toilet paper brands on offer at the different retailers. We did this because it has become increasingly difficult to compare the same brands between retailers.

Four years ago, a litre of 95 Octane cost R16.76. It now costs R22.63.

China’s economy boomed in the 1990s when half of its 1.1-billion people were 24 years old or younger. India also reached 1-billion people in the mid-1990s but it did not follow China’s rapid economic growth.

In two years the payload for road freight transportation has increased by 20% thanks to the problems on Transnet’s rail lines.

R181-billion. That’s how much the treasury has given Eskom since 2016 to help keep things running. And Eskom is not alone. The government has granted R331.2-billion in bailouts to state-owned companies in the 10 years since 2013.

Eskom has received bailouts in 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Other big recapitalisations were for SAA, Sasria (as a result of the July 2021 riots) and Sanral.

Most evenings Eskom uses Twitter to share details of the current demand for electricity and how much power is actually available. A typical tweet also includes details of renewable power available and open-cycle gas turbines in use. For power and data nerds it’s a lot of useful information in a concise package and also a good view of the power(less) situation in South Africa.

This month we’ve added two new outlets to the list: Makro and Boxer.

In the meantime, these are the running prices for the main retailers from August 2022 until this month. The chart leaves out the June and July 2022 prices where we adjusted the quantities.

In the first three months of 2023 more than 2,400 MW of power projects have been registered, more than the number registered in 2022 and more than all the projects registered in the previous 5 years.

For the first time this year, the SPAR basket was not the most expensive, in fact, it came in at the second-cheapest price. Checkers took the priciest spot by R15.46 in comparison with Food Lover’s Market’s bag of goods which was the most affordable at R399.70.

Inflation increased to 7% in February, up slightly from 6.9% in January.

The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group has built up an important database of the cost of groceries that low-income households buy regularly. Two years ago, the basket cost just over R4,000. Today, the same items cost just under R5,000, an almost 25% increase.In October 2020, the survey was expanded to include prices from Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Springbok in the Northern Cape. It previously only collected prices in Pietermaritzburg. The number of items in the basket was also expanded from 38 to 44 items during this expansion. Since February 2019 the price of a basket of goods has increased by 60%.

Every month we take a look at the in-store prices of the same basket of goods across six major retailers – Shoprite, Checkers, Pick n Pay, SPAR, Food Lover’s Market and Woolworths.

For chicken breasts, Food Lover’s Market was the most affordable option at R69.99 a kilogram versus Woolworths at R124.99.

In the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey from StatsSA, the Western Cape has the highest number of employed people since 2008. Its unemployment rate is 22.5%, well below the national rate.

Gold mining accounts for more deaths than any of the other sectors. Since 2013, about 40% of deaths have been at gold mines. Next is platinum (about 30% of deaths) and then coal (10%).

Eskom faces a lot of problems: it has had three chief executives since 2018, it is R396.3-billion in debt, its elderly power stations need constant maintenance, and it doesn’t have enough electricity to supply South Africa.It also has to deal with the fact that municipalities haven’t been paying for the power it supplies. By the end of March 2022, municipalities owed Eskom R44.8-billion.

What makes up the fuel price?

Your grocery basket: Jan 2023

Gautrain users on the increase after Covid-19 decline

A litre of 95 unleaded petrol is 59c more expensive than last month

Africa’s 25 active satellites

Two out of five working age people live in SA’s metros

Uptick in electric vehicle sales

Electric vehicle charging stations

Unemployment drops to 32.9%

SA alcohol prices 2017-2022

South African inflation rises to 7.6% in October

SA food prices 2017 – 2022

Average price of petrol in Southern Africa for the last three months

Your grocery basket: October 2022

Trucking all over South Africa

Your grocery basket: Sept 2022

Off the rails

South African inflation drops to 7.6% in August

Building plans approved

South African sunflower oil prices continue to soar

Petrol is R3 cheaper in September than two months ago

Smells like teen spirit

Fruitless and wasteful

Your grocery basket: August 2022

South African inflation hits 13-year high of 7.8% (again)

Coal clusters: Power plants in SA

SA’s ageing power infrastructure

Women less likely to be employed

Only a quarter of the people who earn over a R1m a year are women

Women earn 20% less than men

We have had a slight reprieve on petrol this morning. 95 octane will cost you R1,32 less a litre at R25,42 but this is still R7,12 more expensive than a litre of petrol in 2021.

Half of SA dams are 50+ years old

Your grocery basket

Pothole Patrol pulverises pits

Inflation hits 13-year high at 7.4%

July fuel price edges towards R27

SA inflation hits 5-year high

Cooking oil: a slippery slope up

32 years of petrol prices compared

Minimum wages around the world

Petrol price breakdown