Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies
Trade in Pretoria

We facilitate policy development and dialogue across six key policy pillars including,,,, and.
We work closely with economic policy stakeholders in South Africa and beyond into Africa, particularly from the public sector and civil society, drawing from our networks with academia and other research partners across the continent and beyond.

Rudi Dicks has been in the trade union movement for most of his life. He held the position of Executive Director of the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (NALEDI) for four years, up until 2013, and is now with the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency as an Outcome Facilitator for Employment and Inclusive Growth. He currently serves on the Advisory committee of the Jobs Fund and the Employment, Income Distribution and Inclusive Growth Research Initiative. Saul has a Masters Degree in Industrial Sociology from the University of Witwatersrand, with his thesis on small business development. He was previously a chief director in the Economic Development Department (EDD) with oversight of the Development Finance Institutions reporting to EDD, including the Industrial Development Corporation and the Small Enterprise Finance Agency. As part of his responsibilities he oversaw the merger of the small business finance entities and ran several projects to support small business development. During this period Australian aid agency AusAID contracted TIPS as one of its local partners to implement a three-year project focused on developing the research infrastructure to accelerate SADC trade analysis. This programme led to the creation of the SADC Trade Database, which provided trade statistics for the region as a public good. The model adopted was TIPS as a research organisation, which combined research or projects either on a commissioned basis (funded by an external partner) or as in-house thought leadership (funded internally). TIPS also developed its project management capacity to run economic conferences for other organisations as well as to support key government initiatives such as the Electricity War Room and the Mining Phakisa. During this period Saul Levin took over as Executive Director of TIPS. He is also an advisor/consultant (part-time) to the Department of Trade and Industry on International Trade and a Special Envoy on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). While TIPS’s core work is for government departments, it works with a wide variety of clients, beneficiaries and partners in the public sector, the private sector, the trade union movement, academia and the donor community. It also works with various organisations beyond the continent, and has working relationships with a network of local and international academics and experts. TIPS works with a range of institutions, universities and research organisations.