In this article, Prof Pumela Msweli, Executive Dean and CEO of the Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership, reflects on the State of the Nation address delivered recently by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Prof Pumela Msweli, Executive Dean and CEO, Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership

On Thursday 6 February 2025, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the State of the Nation Address (SONA) by calling for ethical, skilled and competent leadership. This call is for all South Africans in their myriad institutions, organisations and formations. In setting the tone for the SONA, President Ramaphosa reflected on the future that "we want to build" – a future underpinned by "a government that treats all people with dignity, humility and respect".

The address highlights the significance of partnership and cooperation in this geopolitically entangled world of ours. The President pointed out that the governance model provided by the Government of National Unity (GNU) gives expression to the envisaged culture of cooperation and partnership. The GNU, while reflecting the multicultural mix of South African society, also reflects ideological diversities that could be harnessed to create a platform that fosters dialecticism.

Such dialecticism will allow different, contradicting and divergent views to be synthesised into constructive outcomes that meet the needs of the country. The President announced that he will create another dialectic space – the National Dialogue – that will capture views from South Africans, to build a vision for the country for the next 30 years. A challenge and an opportunity is presented for South African business schools to develop participative competences and critical thinking skills to ensure that the dialogue is dynamic, progressive and transformative.

The three strategic government priorities presented at the SONA sum up the essence and focus of the government’s medium-term development plan: (1) to drive inclusive growth and job creation, (2) to reduce poverty and tackle high cost of living, and (3) to build a capable ethical and developmental state.

The core message of the State of the Nation Address  

The President flags economic growth of over 3% as an urgent imperative to create jobs, reduce poverty and improve the lives of South Africans. In fact, the core message of the SONA is how the government has created, or is in the process of creating, a regulatory environment and reforms, technological and physical infrastructure, funding models, modalities to attract investment, and digital systems to drive inclusive growth and job creation.

South African business schools clearly have their work cut out to capacitate the government and citizens with competences and skills to meet the needs of the people. Research opportunities and topical research themes for the Master of Business Administration (MBA), the Master of Business Leadership (MBL) and doctoral candidates have been spelled out in the State of the Nation Address. Engaged scholarship projects to support government in institutionalising regulatory frameworks and reforms that enable inclusive growth are quite apparent in the SONA. Let us look at these scholarly opportunities in turn.

Opportunity for South African business schools to capacitate the government with pivotal competencies and skills

The President stated that "municipalities lack skills and resources to meet the needs of our people". The President announced that R940 billion will be spent on infrastructure projects. Infrastructure investment at this scale requires innumerable competences and skills that should be included in the curricula of short learning and formal degree programmes. These skills and competencies include, among others:

• Ethical leadership and infrastructure governance skills (including strategic thinking, multimedia communication and data literacy)
• Digital technology and innovation competencies and skills
• Big data and machine learning skills
• Green finance management skills and competencies
• Green manufacturing value chain management skills and competencies
• Instruments and strategies for blended finance
• Project management skills for infrastructure development
• Spatial transformation management skills
• Multilingual business communication skills to facilitate on the job learning
• Rural supply value chain management skills

Business schools are also presented with opportunities to develop short learning programmes (SLPs) to capacitate local economic development in coastal towns and villages. There is an opportunity to develop SLPs to capacitate the state and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the competitive water services provisioning market that is opened up by the Water Amendment Bill.

The announcement of finalising a modernised and comprehensive industrial policy that drives economic growth while focusing on opportunities in localisation, digitisation and decarbonisation, provides fertile ground to develop training programmes to assist SMEs with market extension strategies.

SONA engaged scholarship and research themes for MBA, MBL and doctoral students

The State of the Nation Address opens research opportunities for MBA, MBL and doctoral students to conceptualise research projects with societal impact. For instance, the President announced that a White Paper on Local Government will be developed to outline a modern and fit-for-purpose local government. Research projects may be structured to address a multitude of research themes including:

• What are the outputs and impact indicators of a performance plan of a modern and fit-for-purpose local government?
• What are the challenges facing South African Municipalities in the context of Covid and the 4^th/5^th industrial revolution?
• What are the developmental outcomes of a fit-for-purpose local government?
• How should the cooperative relations between the three spheres of governance be structured to render local government fit for purpose?
• What are the lessons learnt from institutionalising the Presidential eThekwini District Development Model?
• How can the fit for purpose local government performance plan be developed, monitored and evaluated?

Another research and knowledge generation opportunity is opened up by the announcement of the Review of the Municipality Funding Model. What a beautiful opportunity for finance scholars and students to develop research topics in the area of green finance, blended finance and infrastructure finance modelling. Such scholarly work would assist government to come up with optimal and viable sustainable revenue streams to support local development initiatives.

President Ramaphosa also announced that the government is working towards full implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which facilitates intra-Africa trade. This announcement introduces a powerful window of opportunity for business schools to capacitate small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMMEs) and policymakers with a special kind of intra-Africa trade acumen. Such acumen would unlock capabilities to navigate the African trade environment nimbly. This will ensure that the AfCFTA policy regime will yield 30-40% intra-Africa trade and inclusive growth as envisaged by the African Union’s  Agenda 2063. The academic community, and the MBL and MBA students have an opportunity to develop a body of knowledge that addresses a number of  AfCFTA policy implementation questions. Some of these questions are: What kind of intra-Africa trade opportunities are available and how can policy makers, knowledge producers, and economic actors in South Africa better prepare for the opportunities presented by the AfCFTA? Given challenges posed by limited absorptive capacity of the South African economy, infrastructure deficit in Africa and inefficient institutional systems, how can the AfCFTA trade policy be institutionalised in ways that would pivot South Africa and Africa to a new inclusive growth path?

These questions will and must generate a battle of narratives that require critical thought in the GNU and National Dialogue engagements. As the President indicated in the SONA, the time for shouting is over for us. It is time for all South Africans to prepare to resolve the battle of narratives around the best modalities to drive inclusive growth and create jobs, not just within government dialogic spaces but also in our Business Schools as part of our engaged scholarship.  

* Submitted by the Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership