Although faced with a myriad of challenges, which in many cases are discouraging investment, the advancement of technology is leading to more economic opportunities and job creation potential in South Africa.

KPMG South Africa CEO Trevor Hoole noted at a breakfast meeting on Thursday that far less foreign direct investment was coming into the country than the company would have hoped for.

“We are off the backfoot a lot of the time; we have seen what has happened with our ratings. If you take the cynical view, we are trading one level above junk status.”

However, KPMG director Carel Smit noted that, with the pace of technological changes, there were renewed opportunities in all sectors, including mining. “In ten years time, we will be able to mine with technology far deeper and far safer than ever before.

“If you look at the technological advancements in every single field, the way we farm, the way we mine, the way we do our job, everything will change significantly over the next ten years. We will adapt,” he said.

However, he highlighted that there would be fewer job opportunities for unemployed, unskilled people “in this new world of technology”.

Hoole pointed out that this was where the entrepreneurial spirit came into play.

“The biggest beneficiaries of black economic empowerment were actually the white Afrikaners, as they were forced to find different streams of income and they created new jobs. Necessity is the mother of invention,” he stated.

Meanwhile, he said the country was spending too much on welfare, cautioning that this could incentivise the youth not to work.

“These welfare programmes are so generous and we are simply increasing them. The incentive should be towards entrepreneurship rather than welfare. We need to celebrate our entrepreneurial heroes,” he added.

Hoole further said the culture of protecting the country’s electorate was also hampering its growth.

He added that the biggest challenge the country faced was the disparity between government and business. “[These parties] need to work together to attract business to South Africa and, at the moment, there is a widening gap and we need to close that gap to take South Africa forward as an attractive investment destination.

“I’m not convinced that government and business are yet sufficiently aligned and talking about how we can become this attractive destination for the rest of the world,” he said.

EDUCATION IS KEY
KPMG financial services director Sipho Malaba said many of the country’s issues boiled down to a lack of proper education, with the pipeline of potential employees “not getting any better”, as a limited number of people could go to university, owing to the poor mathematics and science education in the country’s public schools.

“We are all competing for the same pool of skilled people. This will not change until there is a [change] in education at the lower levels, at primary education level,” he said.