TRADE AND INVESTMENT
City of Ekurhuleni
City of Ekurhuleni, Place of Peace, enters into own new era Situated in the heart of the Gauteng province, South Africa, the City of Ekurhuleni is poised to become the first Aerotropolis in Africa. An Aerotropolis is a type of urban form comprising aviationintensive businesses and related enterprises extending outward from major airports. It has an Airport City at its core and is surrounded by clusters of aviation-related enterprises. It is similar in form and function to a traditional metropolis, which hosts commuter-linked suburbs. From December 1991 to November 1992, South African political leaders met at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park for the negotiation of a new South African nation, known as the Conference for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). It is a fitting tribute that the place in which South Africa’s future was decided would be incorporated into one of only six metropolitan municipalities at the time, serving high density population areas in South Africa. Today there are eight metropolitan municipalities across the country. On 5 December 2000, seven years after the historic CODESA negotiations, the local government authorities of the nine cities and towns east of Gauteng entered their own new era with the formation of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality. The municipality The region of Ekurhuleni, formerly known as the East Rand, was home to a number of good sized towns that had developed around the mines, and whose charters dated back nearly a century. Nine local administrations amalgamated to form Ekurhuleni – Alberton, Benoni, Boksburg, Brakpan, Edenvale, Germiston, Kempton Park/Tembisa, Nigel, and Springs – along with two other councils, the Khayalami Metropolitan Council and the Eastern Gauteng Services Council.
diverse than that of many countries in Africa. It accounts for nearly a quarter of the Gauteng province’s economy which, in turn, contributes over one third of the national Gross Domestic Product. Ekurhuleni contributes about 7% to the country’s spending power and another 6.2% to its production. In the majority of indicators of economic activity, namely per capita income, unemployment, poverty, average wages, as well as other indicators of human development, it is similar to the rest of Gauteng. It has the largest concentration in Africa of industry for the production of goods and commodities; which is why Ekurhuleni is often referred to as ‘Africa’s workshop’. Manufacturing in Ekurhuleni accounts for 32% of its total production output, and 26% of the GDP of Gauteng.
Economy The economy of the Ekurhuleni region is larger and more
Infrastructure The network of roads, airports, rail lines, telephones,
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Diplomat Africa