{"id":4511,"date":"2021-02-04T14:23:08","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T14:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/?p=4511"},"modified":"2021-02-04T14:23:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T14:23:08","slug":"ford-to-invest-1-billion-to-upgrade-south-africa-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/2021\/02\/04\/ford-to-invest-1-billion-to-upgrade-south-africa-operations\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford to invest $1 billion to upgrade South Africa operations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Link to article: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-ford-motor-safrica-idUSKBN2A210U\">https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-ford-motor-safrica-idUSKBN2A210U<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last Tuesday, Ford Motors Co announced that it had plans to invest a little over $1 billion into its operations in South Africa. One of their goals with this expansion is to increase production of its Ranger pickup truck. The announcer also noted that this will be the largest investment the company makes in South Africa since it began business in the country 97 years ago.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The expansion will add 1,200 jobs to the local economy, and an estimated 10,000 throughout the company worldwide. The Ford plant in Silverton also hopes to be completely carbon neutral by 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other notable car brands such as Toyota, Volkswagen, and Nissan have also recently taken steps to increase their production in Africa. Worldwide car brands are beginning to view the African market as an untapped for future car sales. Currently, about a third of the cars produced are sold locally, and the rest are exported to be sold abroad.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Africa has welcomed Ford\u2019s plans with the hope that it will stimulate the country\u2019s economy. Like most other countries, South Africa has been experiencing a recession due to the Covid-19 pandemic. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa likened Ford to a flower which attracts bees to it, in an effort to explain how the company will attract strong economic growth to the region. The two groups seem to have agreed on fair tariff levels for importing materials and exporting vehicles.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Geopolitically, South Africa is important because it has large quantities of naturally occuring rare metals such as gold, platinum, chromium, manganese, and more. This is attractive to large manufacturers because harvesting rare metals is usually very costly. If the companies can operate closer to those rare metals, it becomes much cheaper to obtain and use the resources. This is also an example of reciprocity because the companies have easy access to resources, and the country benefits from the economic stimulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Further, South Africa is geographically mostly plateaus, which are favorable for building large manufacturing plants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link to article: https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-ford-motor-safrica-idUSKBN2A210U Last Tuesday, Ford Motors Co announced that it had plans to invest a little over $1 billion into its operations in South Africa. One of their goals with this expansion is to increase production of its Ranger pickup truck. The announcer also noted that this will be the largest investment the company makes in South Africa&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/2021\/02\/04\/ford-to-invest-1-billion-to-upgrade-south-africa-operations\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4512,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions\/4512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}