THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE KEY SUB-INDUSTRIES AMONG COASTAL METROPOLITAN CITIES OF SOUTH AFRICA: AN APPLICATION OF THE LOCATION QUOTIENT TECHNIQUE

The future of a stable and viable economy within South African Metropolitan cities will depend on the strengthening of key industries coupled with technological advancement. The aim of this paper is to identify key industry clusters in all four coastal metropolitan cities of South Africa namely Cape Town, eThekwini, Buffalo city, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Location quotient analysis is employed as a method to determine the industries that are playing key roles in the economic development and growth of the metropolitan cities. This paper uses a four-point 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017 as the latest employment data available and a five-year interval is used as optimal data in terms of capturing potential structure change in the local economy of the coastal metropolitan cities in South Africa. Findings of this paper show that sub-industries in the manufacturing and service sectors have been the main drivers of the economic development in these metropolitan cities. Despite the creation of new technology, new business and new jobs to spearhead economic development in South Africa, the results obtained from this study indicate that some of these metropolitan cities are actually characterised by economic stagnation in some of their sub-industries that are supposed to be the key role players in economic growth.