Challenges Of Local Economic Development Unit In South African Municipality: A Case Of Polokwane Local Municipality

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the challenges encountered by the Local Economic Development (LED) unit in South African municipalities. The aim of LED is to ensure sustainable employment growth and the equal distribution of economic activities in the society. The South African government adopted LED in 1996, however, unemployment is still high. The paper seeks to propose resolutions to challenges encountered by LED in order to augment its efficacy in municipalities. The South African government is using LED to enforce the notion of quality life for all, however, there is a seemingly bottleneck when implementing LED in municipalities. Such a bottleneck hinders the optimal and maximum impact of the LED. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to identify the obstacles that pose a threat to the efficiency of LED. This will enable local municipalities to tackle these challenges effectively and strive to increase the effect of LED. The paper used qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Senior officials were interviewed while questionnaires were administered to officials within the LED department. The paper found the following challenges of the LED unit in the Polokwane Local Municipality: inadequate financial resources, short of staff; lack of synergy with other developmental programmes in the LED unit, inadequate infrastructure, and some areas in the municipality are owned by the traditional council. The paper recommends that the municipality should stop deploying projects that are not within the scope of LED in the LED unit, provide adequate staff members, provide additional funding and skilled personnel to the LED unit, and establish a relationship with traditional council that owns land in the municipal area.