Tradable Services, Value Chains and the Gauteng Economy

Abstract

Tradable services hold a considerable yet untapped potential to contribute to economic development in Africa. This chapter assesses the importance of tradable services to the province of Gauteng, which is South Africa’s economic heartland. Refering to secondary data sources, the authors show which services are most significant and to what extent they are engaged in international markets and cross-border value chains. Their analysis reveals that Gauteng possesses a sizeable concentration of skills crucial for tradable services. However growth over the last decade has been in relatively routine tasks and generic skills (both largely dependent on domestic demand), rather than in the sought-after category of professional and technical workers—who would support advanced service industries and other high-productivity tasks. Gauteng’s services sub-sectors also appear to be largely unconnected, instead of focussed on a particular cluster or small group of clusters of closely related activities.