Articles & Research
Municipal audits
On Wednesday the Auditor-General's office released the results of the 2018/19 financial year municipal audits. The audit outcomes have continued to deteriorate: The Free State and North-West provinces continue to perform poorly: there was not one municipality in...
Malawi election results
This week's historic election rerun in Malawi was won by opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera with about 59 percent of the vote. The interactive map below shows the share of the vote won by Chakwera across Malawi's 28 districts. Chakwera's support comes largely from the...
Debt becomes us: failing to flatten the debt curve
A budget document is as much art as it is science. It is no accident that controversial policy decisions and unpalatable realities are buried under economic jargon or banished to an appendix, hidden away like an unwanted stepchild. Our growing debt problem is one of...
COVID-19 and changes to Africa’s election timetable
We look at the effects of COVID-19 on African elections.
Democracy unplugged: Electronic voting in South Africa
South Africans are revisiting the debate over electronic voting against a backdrop of COVID-19 and the national lockdown. In early May, Both the Electoral Commission (IEC) and other stakeholders argued for electronic voting to be introduced in South Africa, in time...
2020 Budget: honest conversations about debt and taxes
The 2020 Budget delivered on Wednesday by Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni is being hailed by some as a delicate balancing act that will constrain public spending and placate the ratings agencies without punishing households and businesses with new taxes. We have to...
A review of Election Directions’ 2019 South African elections forecast
Election Directions is an exciting collaboration between Hlaziya Solutions and Know Africa. In this article we describe our forecasts for the 2019 South African election, and why our probabilistic model is better than the predictive model used by many polling companies.