Document: A Case Study on GTZ BDS LED’s Programme Interventions in the LED Process in Queenstown, Lukhanji Local Municipality, South Africa

In South Africa, Local Economic Development (LED) has become the focus of attention to overcome the multiple obstacles of low skills level, low entrepreneurial culture, inappropriate or weak support mechanisms, lack of access to financial and business development services, spatial marginalisation, local inertia and despondency and numerous other barriers and market failures that lead to high unemployment, low income and thus widespread poverty. As many conventional LED approaches have not proven to show the desired effects, an increasing number of local communities in South Africa have decided to look for innovative approaches in order to face their local economic challenges, and the GTZ LED Project aims at providing support to South African local communities by testing, adapting and marketing appropriate LED concepts and tools.

This case study forms part of these efforts, as it describes and analyses the project's interventions in the LED process in the pilot area of Queenstown, Lukhanji Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape. The second chapter will give an introduction to the Programme's methodological foundations with regard to LED and the respective objectives. Chapter 3 will give an overview of the specific case context of Queenstown, before the single steps of the GTZ intervention process will be unfolded. Based on stakeholder interviews, Chapter 4 will describe the results of the interventions roughly two years after the first intervention took place, followed by an interpretation of the results according to the project's objectives. The last chapter of the case study will summarize the most important lessons learned that have been identified during the process of implementing and assessing PACA in Queenstown and formulates concrete recommendations on the way forward.