| Summary: | A Research Report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Masters of Management in the field of Public Policy (MMPP) at the school of governance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
October 2017 === Since 2004, Limpopo provincial government has been developing and implementing the Provincial Growth and Development Strategies (PGDSs). The rationale of the development of the PGDSs is to provide a vision for development for the province that reflects a growth and development trajectory. However, such a vision should be informed by the national development agenda.
In order to implement and actualise the vision, priorities and programmes of the PGDSs should be implemented by various actors, institutions and structures within the policy environment. These will include, but are not limited to, provincial departments and municipalities, etc. Therefore, the provincial government revived and strengthened the existing institutions and established new ones in order to implement the PGDSs, across spheres of government. The critical success factors of these institutional arrangements are integrated planning, collaboration and cooperation amongst each other and with other non-state actors from the private sector and civil society. In practice, the functionality of these institutional arrangements is not leading towards achievement of desired results and outcomes as silo mentality amongst actors seem to prevail, both in planning and implementation. As a result, the objectives and targets of the PGDS have not been optimally achieved.
Therefore, the study is intended to assess the functionality of the institutional arrangements for the implementation of the PGDSs, and to find out if these policy actors within these policy networks or institutional arrangements are adequate, relevant, appropriate, effective and sustainable towards the achievement of the objectives of the PGDSs. The findings from the study reveal that the provincial government has relatively adequate, relevant and appropriate institutional arrangements. What seems to be lacking, in order to make them effective and sustainable, however, is the adoption of a shared vision and commitment to the course by most actors in the policy networks and across all spheres of government amongst institutions themselves. === MT 2018
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