Date/Time
Date(s) - Wed - 14 Aug
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Categories
You are kindly invited to attend a Seminar entitled, ‘Being bamboozled by budget billions? Selected insights from a comparative analysis of recent budgets of South Africa’s metros, with some reflections on the eThekwini Metro.’, hosted by DUT’s Urban Futures Centre.
PRESENTER: Glen Robbins
DATE: Wednesday, 14 August 2019
TIME: 12:00pm
VENUE: Steve Biko Campus – DUT, UFC offices, S2 Block, Level 4, Room DP4.01B (UFC Common Room). Entrance Gate 1 & 2. 79 Steve Biko Road
Research Abstract:
In recent months the eThekwini Metro has been beset by many challenges. Destructive climate processes and persistent revelations about serious governance challenges are but some of these. With the Municipality having recently adopted its budget for the 2019/2020 year, the presentation explores what we might be able to learn about various challenges through the lens of budget-related research. This work draws on previous work, done by the presenter, in exploring trends in South Africa’s metropolitan city budgets as well as preliminary results from a more recent project, with Liza Cirolia of the African Centre for Cities (University of Cape Town), on municipal fiscal trends in the City of Cape Town.
If any participants are keen to do some prior reading the eThekwini 2019/2020 Medium Term Revenue and Expenditure Framework (budget) can be found at this link http://www.durban.gov.za/Resource_Centre/reports/Pages/default.aspx
Additional background material on metropolitan budgets in South Africa can be found at this link http://www.sacities.net/thematic-areas/well-governed-cities
Bio:
Glen Robbins is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Urban Futures Centre of DUT. He works primarily on issues of urban and regional economic development. From 1995-2003 he worked for the eThekwini Metro following a brief stint doing contract work for a few national government departments. Subsequent to this he spent a little over a decade working as a part-time lecturer (and later an Honorary Research Fellow) in Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (and one of its predecessor institutions, the University of Natal). He has an MPhil in Development Studies (University of Sussex) and continues to work as an advisor to a number of South African public sector bodies as well as multi-lateral organisations in the United Nations system. He is also a Research Associate at PRISM in the School of Economics, University of Cape Town and serves as a director and/or voluntary advisor with a number of NGOs. He has authored and co-authored chapters in a number of books and contributed journal articles on a wide range of issues. His current research activities include: factors influencing the evolution of metropolitan budgets in South Africa, national economic policies and their impact on cities, human settlements, changing productive dynamics in Tanzania and the value chains of energy transitions in South Africa.