South Africa: Rebuilding the Dream
Mon, 11 November, 2019
2:00pm - 3:30pm
Monday, November 11th, 2019
2:00pm – 3:30pm
Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
Elliott School for International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW Washington DC 20052
Event Overview
Twenty-five years after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s economy is in crisis. Inequality in South Africa is the highest in the world; unemployment is on the rise; and economic growth (projected at 0.8 percent in 2019) has hovered precariously close to recession. In After Dawn: Hope After State Capture, former South African Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas, the man who first blew the whistle on corruption in the Zuma administration, offers a blunt assessment of the country’s economic woes and the failures of governance that caused it. He proposes a series of practical solutions to build a growing, job-creating economy that can begin to meet South African’s unfulfilled expectations of economic transformation.
Panelists
Mcebisi Jonas, Author of After Dawn: Hope after State Capture and former Deputy Finance Minister of South Africa
Mcebisi Jonas is author of After Dawn: Hope after State Capture, and chairman designate of MTN, one of Africa’s largest techonology companies. He is the former Deputy Finance Minister of South Africa, a position he held from 2014 to 2016. In that position, he was an early whistle-blower in the “Gupta-Gate” state capture scandal, and was subsequently fired by President Jacob Zuma. He currently serves on President Cyril Ramphosa’s team of international trade and investment “ambassadors.”
Stephen Smith, Professor of Economics and International Affairs and Chair, Department of Economics, GW
Stephen Smith’s work focuses on economic development, with a special focus on solutions to poverty. He also researches economic development strategies, developing country financing issues, and the economics of adaptation to climate change in low-income countries. He has also conducted extensive research on the economics of cooperatives, works councils, and codetermination. He is currently on sabbatical at the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, in Florence, Italy, where he is a UNICEF Senior Fellow.
Yusuf Shahid, Chief Economist, The Growth Dialogue
Shahid Yusuf is Chief Economist of the Growth Dialogue. Dr. Yusuf brings many decades of economic development experience to the Dialogue, having been intensively involved with the growth policies of many of the most successful East Asian economies during key periods of their histories. He has written extensively on development issues, with a special focus on East Asia and has also published widely in various academic journals. He has authored or edited 24 books on industrial and urban development, innovation systems and tertiary education.
Moderated by Jennifer Cooke, Director of the Institute for African Studies
Jennifer Cooke is formerly the director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she led research and analysis on political, economic, and security dynamics in Africa. She is a frequent writer and lecturer on U.S.-Africa policy and provides briefings, testimony, and policy recommendations to U.S. policymakers, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. military.
This event is co-sponosored by the Institute for African Studies.
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