SA must reignite its manufacturing sector if it hopes to achieve sustainable economic growth, Justin Barnes, the government’s chief private sector adviser on automotive policy, said last week.
Years of underinvestment and “deindustrialisation” had created a huge gap between SA and other developing countries, he said.
In the 20 years to 2018, SA’s average per capita value addition through manufacturing was 0.5%, compared with 8% in Vietnam and 5.7% in India.
“We urgently need to develop a commitment to manufacturing,” he said.
Barnes, director of the Toyota Wessels Institute for Manufacturing Studies (Twims), was speaking from its Durban campus at the announcement of an R18m corporate investment in research.
Vehicle manufacturer Toyota, components group Metair, clothing group TFG and sugar producer Illovo Africa have donated a combined R18m to sponsor chairs in, respectively, lean management, green manufacturing, future manufacturing and African trade and industrialisation.
The institute, founded in 2018, operates as part of Pretoria University’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs). It offers an MBA degree and executive education short courses. Barnes said the new chairs would allow it to branch out into specialist research.
Despite carrying Toyota’s name, Twims is open to anyone wanting to study manufacturing. Barnes said the educational institution, the only one of its kind in SA, had begun to attract students from other local motor companies as well as elsewhere in Africa.
He said: “SA has lagged the rest of the developing world in harnessing manufacturing ... and it is even more pronounced for the rest of the continent. We have to create a new generation of skilled, knowledgeable industrial leaders.”
Barnes is chief architect of the government’s SA Automotive Masterplan, which is due to launch on July 1 and shape the motor industry until 2035. One of its pillars is the creation of a pan-African motor industry that will increase vehicle demand and enable more countries to develop a manufacturing base.
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