WEF Competitiveness Report: Two wooden spoons, two gold medals
After today's release of the keenly awaited annual World Competitiveness Report, we got hold of the WEF's Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz for further insights. Sadly, there wasn't much she could advise beyond the hope that those who have the power to change things take note of the problem areas and build on the good ones. SA's overall performance continues to slide, but more worrying still is that it is rated last of all 144 countries in two categories – the quality of science and maths education; and, predictably, Co-operation in labour-employer relations. With such a shocking report card, the only surprise is that despite this evidence, Pretoria still refuses to smell the coffee. Maybe the real joke is how those hot air peddlers expect the rest of us to take their job creation prognostications seriously. – AH
ALEC HOGG: Well, as you would have heard through the program today, the World Economic Forum has released its Annual Global Competitiveness Report that came out this morning. South Africa dropped three places to the 56th spot and it's only the third most competitive nation amongst the BRICS now. We've fallen behind China and Russia. On the African continent, a distant second to Mauritius. In fact, South Africa sitting at 56 is way behind Mauritius, which is up six place to 39th. Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz – I hope I pronounced that close to accurately – who is the Director of Global Competitiveness Network joins us on the line. A good achievement by Mauritius. A good move upwards by Rwanda as well – up to the 62nd slot, but from where you're sitting, to look at South Africa continually slide every year, I guess one must wonder if the message that's contained in the Competitiveness Report is actually getting through.
MARGARETA DRZENIEK-HANOUZ: Yes, we did see South Africa drop by three positions to 56, although one must say that it's due to the instability in South Africa this year that South Africa has been overtaken by a number of other countries. We're still not seeing major improvement. What there must be in South Africa is much more public/private collaboration in a number of areas of competitiveness. One of the important areas for South Africa is obviously the health and primary education (or overall education) in order to prepare workers for the future and in order to ensure that young people can get the jobs they need in order to earn an honest living.
ALEC HOGG: Margareta, we have two wooden spoon positions. One-hundred-and-forty-four countries were analysed. South Africa comes in at 144th in the quality of maths and science education and it comes 144th in cooperation in labour/employer relations. Now, neither of those would be surprises to people in this country who've been waving flags about them. Is this an issue though, that you can see improving any time in the future?
MARGARETA DRZENIEK-HANOUZ: Well, it's hard to say from what side those issues are going to be improving in the future. However, we hope that South Africa uses the report in a positive sense – in the sense that it's a wake-up call to do something about the education system improves – and that the alignment between the curricular and the needs of business, which we see in the survey, very clearly, is misaligned. There seems to be a disconnect between the needs of the business community and what is being taught at school. The business community, which is the source of the information that you find, is stating very clearly that this is a concern.
ALEC HOGG: But we are Number 1 in the world on one topic, and that's on the strength of auditing and reporting standards. It's a highly competitive field around the world. What would give South Africa the edge here?
MARGARETA DRZENIEK-HANOUZ: I did not hear the second half of that.
ALEC HOGG: Why would South Africa be rated Number 1 in the world on that subject? What gave it the edge?
MARGARETA DRZENIEK-HANOUZ: Well, this too, is based on information from executives who answered very favourably regarding South Africa's strength in auditing and reporting standards. The business executives from South Africa do feel that the auditing standards are very strong and have very high standards.
ALEC HOGG: That was Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, the Director of Global Competitiveness Network, talking to us from Switzerland.