MSM Dean delivers Simon Brand Memorial lecture

MSM Dean Prof. Wim Naudé delivered the Simon Brand Memorial Lecture on 30 September at the Annual Conference of the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA).

The conference was held at Khaya iBhubesi in the country’s North-West Province, attended by more than 200 participants from all over Southern Africa and elsewhere.

Professor Naudé’s lecture was entitled ‘ Entrepreneurship and the reallocation of African farmers’ and provided an overview of the role of entrepreneurs to facilitate the movement of laborers out of agriculture and farming into other sectors and jobs, and to facilitate the movement of labour from rural areas to secondary and capital cities. “There are huge opportunities for Africa to benefit from the increase in the demand for food, but this would require higher productivity in agriculture, and in non-agricultural businesses; removing barriers to the occupational and physical mobility of workers is therefore foremost priority now facing policy makers and development agencies”, he said.