South Africa needs “industrial activists” to jumpstart the manufacturing sector and reposition the country on a growth path, Aspen Pharmacare senior executive for strategic trade development Stavros Nicolaou said on Wednesday.

Chairing a panel on the second day of the Manufacturing Indaba, he said there was a need to mobilise South Africa’s constituents to drive the growth of the nation’s stalling manufacturing sector and stimulate much-coveted industrialisation.

“Do that and our economy will grow by 6%,” he commented, stressing that there was a need “for all of us” to become industrial activists.

Department of Trade and Industry industrial policy development deputy director-general Garth Strachan indicated that the economic environment in which the manufacturing sector currently found itself provided an opportunity to build a better, more collaborative and mutually beneficial relationship between the public and the private sector.

The future of the manufacturing sector in South Africa relied on getting all stakeholders – large and small, private and public – to collaborate.

Conferences such as the Manufacturing Indaba were some of the platforms that should be leveraged for this purpose, stimulating the “really close collaborative effort” required for diversified manufacturing-led growth.

“For too long, government and the private sector have been throwing stones across the table,” he said.

Further, Strachan expressed the need for a higher impact industrial strategy and policy, intragovernmental alignment, public–private collaboration and the timeous deployment of plans.

The “pyramid approach” to policy should be replaced with a “circular regulatory framework” that ensured mutually beneficial regulation was developed for the best interests of the nation.

The government’s responsibility was to create the policy and legislative framework and an attractive operating environment, Gautrain Management Agency CEO Jack van der Merwe added.

“Government must steer the boat, not row it. The private sector must row it,” he said, pointing out that the private sector, for its part, needed to bring agility and innovation to the table.