Document: A Case Study of Local Economic Development (LED) in Richards Bay

This paper discusses the socioeconoic impact that these local state and private sector initiatives have had and outlines the current social  investment initiatives that the latter have adopted. Local Economic Development (LED) initiatives, as a pro-poor response to encourage community upliftment, are firmly  in place in the local municipality’s LED strategy, and receive considerable support there-from. A key feature of the local economy however, are the poorly developed backward and forward linkages that the core manufacturing sector has with the rest of the local economy and the paucity of small and medium enterprises in general and as suppliers/off-shoots to the major firms. The capital-intensive corporate companies dominate the local economy, but provide few employment opportunities because of their capital intensive nature. As a consequence, corporate companies play a key role  in pro-poor development through their Corporate Social Investment (CSI) initiatives. Both the local Municipality (uMhlathuze), and the District Municipality (Uthungulu), are actively seeking propoor LED interventions and job creating  opportunities through their respective Integrated Development Planning processes.