Final Adopted IDP - KZN Development Planning

Provincial Spatial Economic Development Strategy
The KwaZulu-Natal Spatial Economic Development Strategy (PSEDS) was formulated in
2007 as a spatial economic assessment of the areas of need and potential within the
Province. The PSEDS is intended as a guide to service delivery to achieve the goals set
in ASGI-SA to halve poverty and employment by 2014. The PSEDS is built on the five
principles set out in the NSDP. The PSEDS sets out to focus on where government
directs its investment and development initiatives; capitalises on complementarities and
facilitate consistent and focused decision making; and bring about strategic
coordination, interaction and alignment. The PSEDS recognises that social and economic
development is never uniformly distributed since Apartheid created an unnatural
distortion of development and this distortion must be addressed. Within the
framework of the NSDP, the PSEDS aims to achieve the following:
Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger;
Fighting poverty and protecting vulnerable groups in society;
Promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women;
Developing a comprehensive response to HIV / AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
Sustainable economic development and job creation;
Sustainable governance and service delivery;
Integrating investment in community infrastructure;
Developing human capability; and
Ensuring environmental sustainability
The New Growth Path: The Framework
The aim of the New Growth Path for South Africa is to knit together industrial policy
action plans with the policies and programmes in rural development, agriculture, science
and technology, education and skills development, labour, mining and beneficiation,
tourism, social development and other areas. The strategy followed by the New Growth
Path identifies areas where employment creation is possible and the development of
policy packages to facilitate employment creation in these areas. Job drivers are
needed to facilitate the creation of employment opportunities. The New Growth Path
reflects five main job drivers – Infrastructure; identifying the main economic sectors;
seizing the potential of new economies (such as the green economy); investing in social
capital and public services; and spatial development. In his State of the Nation Address
delivered on 9 February 2012, the President reiterated the job drivers in the New
Growth Path Framework as infrastructure development, tourism, agriculture, mining,
manufacturing and the green economy.
From a local government perspective, the New Growth Path must aim to break the
spatial challenges introduced by the Apartheid era through the identification of areas
for focused investment in infrastructure, and the identification of viable and
17