Global financial markets could be in for another choppy year in 2023, say analysts, with the first quarter likely to be the most volatile.

Trying to get to grips with what to expect from Africa’s economies in 2019 can be broken out into three categories of discussion: the good, the underwhelming and the disconcerting.

The World Bank cut its 2019 global growth forecast, citing a slowdown in trade growth to the weakest since the financial crisis a decade ago and a drop in global investment.

The U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Mark Green recently concluded a one-week visit to USAID-funded programs at several African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique. His goal was to promote sustainable paths to self-reliance, including in the context of food security programs.

SA’s political leaders often mention agriculture as one of the sectors that will boost our economic fortunes and create jobs in rural areas. For a long time, this has been stated without a clear practical execution plan.

South Africa is the strongest research player in Africa, with deep roots in astronomy, agriculture, health and social research. But the country’s persistent budget and social problems have hit the research sector as well – even as the government looks to science and technology to help solve those very problems.

The COVID-19 crisis is a ‘stress test’ for our global food systems – and they are failing.

Economic growth is created by the demand and supply side of the economy and driven by the profit motive and calculated on the basis of an internationally recognized and accepted methodology by Statistics SA.

As SA’s summer crop — which includes maize — is set to be one of the best on record, focus now shifts to the outlook for winter crops, specifically wheat.

There is no shortage of technological innovations designed to boost animal agriculture in Africa. These range from GPS tracking systems which identify and trace pastoralists’ herds to livestock vaccine SMS services that alert farmers to disease outbreaks.

Fanie Brink- Onafhanklike Landbou-Ekonoom/Independent Agricultural Economist.

The high-frequency data across the major economies and the developing world underscore the view that the world will experience one of the sharpest declines in economic activity in history.

 South Africa’s agricultural sector was the only shining light in the second quarter of this year.

There has been much hype that South Africa could follow Zambia and ‘fall off the fiscal cliff’ or renege on its sovereign debt. In this regard, it is helpful, and perhaps comforting, to note that only about 10% of the government’s current issued bonds are denominated in foreign currency.

The economy made a better than anticipated rebound in the third quarter, increasing at a seasonally adjusted and annualised rate of 66.1% as lockdown restrictions were eased.

Most South Africans are now understandably keen to see the end of 2020 and are hoping for better times in 2021, after what has been a rollercoaster year for SA’s political economy.

The word “profit” must be one of the most maligned and vilified in human history. This is either out of ignorance, for ideological reasons, or out of pure malice.

Mattress producers to car manufacturers to aluminum foil makers are buying more material than they need to survive the breakneck speed at which demand for goods is recovering and assuage that primal fear of running out.

At the bustling Indian Ocean port of Beira, in Mozambique, steel cranes stack containers full of raw tobacco leaves into ships’ holds, ready for export to processing plants around the world.

The Chief Executive Officer of Business Leadership SA (BLSA), Busi Mavuso, has once again made many highly controversial statements in her latest weekly newsletter which are very far off course to economic recovery and growth.