SEDA’ s Establishment Gains Momentum

A stakeholders’ meeting to discuss the formation of the Sekhukhune Development Agency (Seda) will be held on April 4.
Seda is a service utility, which will be established to drive and unlock the economic potential of the Greater Sekhukhune district in mining, tourism and agriculture sectors.

It will be a vehicle identifying, initiating and implementing high impact economic projects and - as a spin-off – create sustainable job opportunities.
The meeting will take place at Rob Riba Hall, Jane Furse, and a copy of the by-law to establish the utility will be made available to stakeholders for their input.
The by-law is in accordance with Section 86H of No 44 of 2003: Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Act, 2003.

The idea of establishing this agency was mooted during the GSDM’s two-day Growth and Development Summit, which was held at Loskop Dam Aventura Resorts from14 June to 15 June in 2006.

The summit saw a gap and a need for such an entity to accelerate the economic growth of the district.

GSDM executive mayor Cllr Namane Masemola said the agency would be established in the 2008/09 financial year.

Ministerial approval has been secured from the Department of Provincial and Local Government.

Even before coming into existence, the agency is already entrusted with driving tourism projects that will emanate from the construction of the R9-billion De Hoop Dam in Ma-Seven (Ga-Magolego) village near the first post-apartheid platinum city - Burgersfort.

Seda comes at a time the district’s economy shows signs of dramatic improvement.

One milestone of economic success, according to Masemola’s State of the District Address (SODA), is that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the district has increased from 4% in the 2006/07 financial year to 66 % from January to date in the current financial year.