MAITE NKOANA-MASHABANE
MEC FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT & HOUSING, LIMPOPO PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

The biggest challenge facing Limpopo and South Africa today is to create jobs in the context of a dual economy, where blue chip companies operate in a modern, well regulated system alongside a marginalised informal economy, characterised by high unemployment and poverty.

Our mission is to rise to this challenge, to fight poverty and create work for our citizens. We need to close the gap between rich and poor, first economy and second economy, so that we can live together in peace, prosperity and harmony.

Local economic development (LED) is emerging as a powerful approach to address these challenges. Through partnerships between the public sector and private sector, between communities and the commercial sector, we can together find creative solutions to local problems such as land reform.LED can also help create a more competitive Limpopo by offering practical ways to form clusters in our priority sectors of tourism, agri-business and mining. We are very fortunate to have the European Union as our partners to help us tackle these challenges. Through their donation of R255 million together we have designed the Limpopo Local Economic Development (LED) Programme, which is aimed at uplifting the poor through sustainable economic growth. This will be done by focusing on four core areas:

* Supporting economic development of marginalised communities;
* Creating more competitive industries in our priority sectors;
* Creating a business-enabling environment that encourages business to flourish; and
* Building the capacities of our local government institutions and service providers to better manage economic development and provide the necessary services and infrastructure.

A combination of grant funds and technical assistance means that this programme brings much needed project finance and expertise to our province.

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