In the next 20 years, the number of people aged 15-24 in sub-Saharan Africa will increase by a 100 million. Genesis works in many of the critical areas in which the prospects for this generation of young people will be determined, including health, agriculture, communications, financial services and youth economic empowerment. This newsletter presents some of our current work. 

MERL Tech, which has been successful in London and DC, came to Jozi for the first time. Its purpose was to bring together development practitioners at the intersection of M&E and technology to share and learn how we can, together, tackle the fourth industrial revolution and use technology to do our jobs better.

Richard Ketley asks whether in all the hype about fintech we have lost track of the importance of finding ways to support mobile network operators to establish the infrastructure required for mobile money and to encourage regulators to balance the reward for investment in mobile money while preventing excessive pricing. 

Genesis has proposed a number of changes to the economic provisions in the SA Competition Amendment Bill to avoid the potentially large negative unintended consequences of the current Bill, while still achieving the objective of assisting SMEs and firms owned/controlled by historically disadvantaged persons to participate in the economy. 

Much has been written about the growth of the cashless economy, but new product innovations are giving South African consumers fewer and fewer reasons to open or maintain a bank account. Cash, it seems, is making a comeback.

Rapid urbanisation and industrial growth are exacerbating demand for water but also generating increased volumes of wastewater/effluent that can be re-used by industry. 

Digital technology is transforming economies and the world of work in profound ways. Traditional jobs are being transformed while new forms of work are being created. But is South Africa preparing young people to find employment in the fourth industrial revolution?

The Competition Appeal Court’s recent decision in the Media24 case has brought clarity to the law of predatory pricing in South Africa – the practice of dominant firms cutting prices to levels where equally efficient competitors cannot compete and ultimately exit the market. 

On behalf of the CEOs’ Initiative, Standard Bank asked Genesis Analytics to work with the largest companies in the Vaal Region and four public sector partners to prepare a joint Action Plan to bring business and government together to address the decline of the Vaal Region and prevent it from becoming the “rust belt” of South Africa. This trend mirrors the decline of manufacturing in South Africa over the past 10 years. 

The Vaal Region Regeneration Action Plan is a possible partnership between business and government to turn around the deindustrialisation of the Vaal Region. The Vaal has traditionally been South Africa’s heavy industrial, manufacturing and engineering hub. However, owing to an array of reasons, which are explored in this information pack, the region has suffered from falling output and company closures. 

In the next two decades, technology will redraw the manufacturing map of the world. As legacy factors such as geography and starting conditions become less important, other factors will be pivotal to manufacturing location. This establishes a clear agenda for countries aspiring to join the ranks of manufacturing exporters, writes Genesis Analytics founder Stephan Malherbe in a background paper for Oxford's Pathways for Prosperity Commission.

The SA Competition Amendment Bill was tabled before Parliament in July and was the subject of public hearings before the Portfolio Committee for Economic Development in late August.  On the basis of those hearings and further engagements with the Ministry, the Committee approved further amendments to the Bill on 16 October 2018. Download B version of the Bill, which will now be placed before the National Assembly for a vote before heading to the National Council of Provinces

The SA Competition Amendment Bill was tabled before Parliament in July and was the subject of public hearings before the Portfolio Committee for Economic Development in late August.  On the basis of those hearings and further engagements with the Ministry, the Committee approved further amendments to the Bill on 16 October 2018. Download the Committee report. 

Genesis was contracted by Airbnb to measure the economic impact of the online accommodation marketing platform on tourism in South Africa. Since its founding, 2 million guests have arrived at listings on Airbnb in South Africa, and 3.5 million across Africa as a whole, with roughly half of these arrivals occurring in just the past year.

Genesis co-authored a collaborative report for the World Bank's Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) on the design and implementation of gender-inclusive digital jobs interventions for youth -  without which the global digital revolution might turn out to be a big backward step for global gender equality.

Our Health practice presented three posters at the 21 International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam. “What women want: Branding a new HIV-prevention vaginal ring using a user-centric design approach” was based on two dapivirine (DPV) vaginal-ring branding studies. Genesis also presented work with the Centre for Communication Impact (CCI) and Soul City Institute for Social Justice.