Gauteng Business 2020/21 edition

SPECIAL FEATURE
and to upgrade hostels into family units. All of
these programmes should provide a boost to the
construction and property sector and to small
businesses in both sectors.
15 Alice Lane Annex. Image: Andrew Bell/Paragon Architects
Overview of the province
Gauteng is South Africa’s smallest province in
terms of landmass but in every other respect it is
a giant. The province is the nation’s key economic
growth engine.
At 18 176km², the province makes up just 1.5%
of South Africa’s territory, but even that aspect
showed growth in 2018 when the territory
of Ekangala was formally transferred from
Mpumalanga Province to Gauteng Province.
Theland had previously been part of the
KwaNdebele homeland.
The 14.3-million people living in Gauteng in
2017 generated a gross domestic product of R1.59-
trillion, about a third of South Africa’s GDP (StatsSA).
Gauteng shares borders with four provinces, the
Free State, North West, Limpopo and
Mpumalanga. The southern border of
the province is the Vaal River and most of
the province is located on the Highveld.
The Witwatersrand, which runs through
Johannesburg, marks the continental
divide: rivers running to the north drain
into the Indian Ocean, rivers running
south drain into the Atlantic Ocean via
the Vaal into the Orange River. Gauteng
draws its water from a series of interconnected
river transfer systems. A major
source of water is the Lesotho Water
Highlands Project.
The Witwatersrand was the source of
the gold that drew so many thousands of
people to the area in the late 19th century
and was the origin of the word for South
Africa’s currency, the “rand”.
Gauteng is a leader in a wide range of economic
sectors: finance, manufacturing, commerce, IT and
media among them. The Bureau of Market Research
(BMR) has shown that Gauteng accounts for 35% of
total household consumption in South Africa.
The leading economic sectors are finance, real
estate and business, manufacturing, government
services and wholesale, retail, motor trade
and accommodation. The creative industries
(including advertising and the film sector) employ
upwards of 180 000 people and contribute more
than R3.3-billion to the provincial economy. This
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