The complexities of development: The South African national industrial participation programme in perspective

Abstract

From the late 1990s, the National Industrial Participation Programme (NIPP) and the associated Defence Industrial Participation (DIP) programme have become one of the more visible development-oriented programmes of the post-apartheid, African National Congress (ANC), government. Industrial participation and countertrade have remained surprisingly resilient as methods of public procurement exercises and potential means of leveraging technology transfers and economic and industrial development. However, analyzing the impact of such programmes and deciphering their myths (Balakrishnan and Matthews 2009) are challenges to the relevant state agencies, industry practitioners and scholars alike. Andrea Hurst points out that development analysis and prescription should be grounded in a greater conceptual appreciation of the complexities and contradictions of social and economic reality (Hurst 2010).