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The University of the Free State is pleased to present its third discussion, titled The need for a global and regional plan / approach to respond to the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war, which is part of the 2023 Thought-Leader Webinar Series. As a public higher-education institution in South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to public discourse, the University of the Free State (UFS) will be presenting the webinar as part of the UFS Thought-Leader Series, which is in its fifth consecutive year.  The aim of the webinar series is to discuss issues facing South Africa by engaging experts at the university and in South Africa.

Webinar presented on 7 September 2023

It is now just over a year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the devastating impact of the war can be felt globally. Global supply chains, trade in food and fertilisers, and the price of oil have not been spared. The inflationary impact of the war on South Africa poses a risk to economic growth, increases poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, social instability, and interest rates. Major issues on the global agenda have been overlooked due to the war, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, climate change, food insecurity, and the energy crisis, among others. The war highlights the need for a necessary global approach and regional arrangements to protect economies. How can South Africa and its regional partners leverage their resources to advance long-term development and sustainability needs and improve the legacy of the African continent.

Date:   Thursday 7 September 2023

Time: 12:30-14:00

RSVP:  https://events.ufs.ac.za/e/TLWebinarSept  no later than 4 September 2023.

For further information, contact Alicia Pienaar at pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za.

Some of the topics discussed by leading experts in 2022 included, among others, Crime in South Africa – who is to blame; Are our glasses half full or half empty; What needs to be done to power up South Africa; A look into the future of South Africa. This year’s webinar series commenced in April, when we discussed ‘Threats to South Africa’s stability and security challenges.’

Facilitator:

Prof Francis Petersen

Vice-Chancellor and Principal, UFS

Panellists:

Wandile Sihlobo

Chief Economist

Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa

Elizabeth Sidiropoulos

Chief Executive

South African Institute of International Affairs

Jakkie Cilliers

Chairperson

Institute for Security Studies

Prof Philippe Burger

Dean: Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences

University of the Free State

Bios of speakers:

Wandile Sihlobo

Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and the author of Finding Common Ground: Land, Equity, and Agriculture.

He is a Senior Lecturer Extraordinary in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University and a Visiting Research Fellow in the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand. Sihlobo was appointed as a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council in 2019 (and re-appointed in 2022), having served on the Presidential Expert Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture from 2018. He is also a member of the Council of Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) and a Commissioner at the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC). Sihlobo is a columnist for Business Day, The Herald, and Farmers Weekly magazine. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Fort Hare and a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from Stellenbosch University.

Elizabeth Sidiropoulos

Elizabeth Sidiropoulos is the Chief Executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs. Her areas of expertise lie in South African foreign policy, Africa and external powers, global governance, and South-South cooperation. Her most recent publications include co-edited volumes on Values, Interests and Power: South African Foreign Policy in Uncertain Times (2020), and The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (2021).  She is the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of International Affairs, a policy-oriented, peer-reviewed, and interdisciplinary forum for discussion on Africa and South Africa’s international affairs. She is a regular commentator in South African and foreign media. In December 2020, she was appointed to serve on the UN’s Second High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs. She is a co-chair of the task force on the SDGs of the Indian Think 20 Presidency in 2023.

Dr Jakkie Cilliers

Jakkie Cilliers is the founder and former executive director of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). He currently serves as chair of the ISS Board of Trustees and head of the African Futures and Innovation (AFI) programme at the Pretoria office of the ISS. His 2017 bestseller Fate of the Nation addresses South Africa’s future from political, economic, and social perspectives. His three most recent books, Africa First! Igniting a Growth Revolution (March 2020), The Future of Africa: Challenges and Opportunities  (April 2021), and Africa Tomorrow: Pathways to Prosperity (June 2022) take a rigorous look at the continent as a whole.

Prof Philippe Burger

Prof Philippe Burger has been Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Free State since 2022, and Professor of Economics, University of the Free State, since 2007. He is a 2016/17 Fulbright Exchange Scholar in the Centre for Sustainable Development, Earth Institute, at Columbia University, where he wrote a book titled, Getting it right: a new economy for South Africa. The book was launched through, among others, presentations at the IMF, World Bank, and RAND Corporation in Washington DC. Published in September 2018, it deals with South Africa’s low growth and high unemployment problem. Since April 2022, he has been a non-resident Senior Research Fellow in the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), in which capacity he is the lead of the Macro-Fiscal workstream for the SA-TIED II project. He was a member of the Fiscal Policy and Financial Markets Task Team of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19. In 2009, he was a visiting scholar at the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD), researching public-private partnerships and the global financial crisis, and in 2007, 2010, and 2012, he was seconded to the OECD in Paris to work on public-private partnerships and capital budgeting. He has written numerous scholarly books and articles on macroeconomics, public finance, and fiscal policy.