cities

• Johannesburg is South Africa’s largest and fastest-growing city economy, and from 2005 has
outpaced the other larger cities.
• Between 2010 and 2013, the Gauteng cities led economic growth performance:
Johannesburg’s GVA grew by 3.2% a year on average, followed by Tshwane at 2.9% and
Ekurhuleni at 2.8%.
• During the same period, Cape Town’s GVA was 2.7% and eThekwini’s 2.5% a year.
• Nelson Mandela Bay’s GVA grew by a mere 1.3% a year on average, while Mangaung (2.3%),
Buffalo City (2.3%), and Msunduzi (2.2%) performed slightly better.
These aggregate figures do not show the unequal ways that this growth manifests at a sub-city level
as shown in Chapter 1 (“Population is concentrating in city cores and economic nodes”).
City economic structure
Tertiary services drive city economies and in 2013 made up almost three-quarters (74.2%) of the
cities’ combined economic base, a higher proportion than the national average (69.8%), and accounted
for almost four-fifths (79.3%) of total city employment (Figure 3.5). The secondary or production
sector accounted for less than a quarter (22.2%) of total city economic activity, and only 18.3% of
employment.
3
Figure 3.5: Economic sector share of city GVA (2013)
100%
80%
80.3% 77.0% 64.8% 71.0% 76.6% 81.3% 68.6% 71.5% 78.4% 74.2% 69.8%
60%
40%
20%
18.9% 21.4% 33.0% 26.7% 21.6% 16.3% 26.2% 27.9% 20.6% 24.0% 22.2%
0%
BUFF
CPT EKU ETH JHB MAN MSU NMB TSH Ave for
all metros
SA
Tertiary sector
Secondary sector
Primary sector
Source: Quantec Research (2015)
PRODUCTIVE CITIES 95