Executive Report on Strategies in South Africa

The primary audience for this report is managers involved with the highest levels of the strategic planning process and consultants who help their clients with this task. The user will not only benefit from the hundreds of hours that went into the methodology and its application, but also from its alternative perspective on strategic planning in South Africa.This report helps executives evaluate strategic investment and entry alternatives in South Africa. As the editor of this report, I am drawing on a methodology developed at INSEAD, an international business school (www.insead.edu). The methodology decomposes a country's strategic potential along three key dimensions: (1) latent demand, (2) accessibility, and (3) trade indicators. A country may have very high latent demand, yet have low accessibility, making it a less attractive market than many smaller potential countries having higher levels of accessibility. With this perspective, this report provides a strategic profile of South Africa. It does so by compiling published information that directly relates to latent demand and accessibility. The reader new to South Africa can quickly understand where South Africa fits into a firm's strategic perspective. In what follows, Chapter 2 is a general evaluation of the accessibility of South Africa, with particular focus on investment and business conditions. In Chapter 3, I report my findings on the real economic potential, or latent demand, represented by South Africa when defined as an area of dominant influence. Chapter 3 is followed by trade indicators for key industries, categories, and products in South Africa.